Regime forces and armed groups were locked in heavy clashes yesterday on the edge of Syria’s last opposition bastion, with 96 fighters killed over two days, a war monitor said.

The battles since Saturday on the edge of the jihadist-dominated Idlib region are the most deadly since a Russia-brokered ceasefire went into effect in late August, the Syrian Observatory for Human rights said. “Fighting raged at dawn Monday on several axes in the southeastern Idlib countryside,” the Britain-based monitoring group said.