Jihadists in Syria’s Idlib failed to meet a Monday deadline to leave a planned buffer zone ringing the country’s last rebel bastion, casting fresh doubt over a deal to avert bloodshed. A Russian-Turkish truce reached nearly a month ago for the northwestern region gave "radical fighters" until October 15 to leave a proposed demilitarised area between government and opposition forces. The accord was a last-ditch effort to stave off a regime onslaught on Idlib, the largest rebel stronghold left in Syria and home to about 3-million people. But the target date for the withdrawal came and went without any hardliners leaving. "We did not document the withdrawal of any jihadist fighters from the entire demilitarised zone," Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, said on Monday morning. Syria’s government said it would take "time" to judge whether the deal had failed. Hours before the cut-off time, Idlib’s jihadist heavyweight Hayat Tahrir al-Sham ...
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