IDLIB, Syria — Ansar al-Tawhid, an insurgent group affiliated with al-Qaeda, claimed responsibility for bombing Feb. 7 an operations room of the Russian forces in the city of Kafr Nabl in the south of Syria's Idlib governate, which killed and injured several soldiers on the site, including a high-ranking Russian officer.

On Feb. 9, a video circulated on social media showing the group’s militants sniping at the Syrian government and Russian forces on Idlib’s fronts. This comes amid the recurrent targeting of the regime forces’ site with missiles recently.

Ansar al-Tawhid is one of the founders of the Rouse the Believers operations room, which was announced in mid-October 2018, and includes, in addition to Ansar al-Tahwid, al-Qaeda-affiliate Hurras al-Din; Ansar al-Din Front, which previously defected from Jabhat al-Nusra, currently Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS); and Ansar al-Islam. The Rouse the Believers operations room has mainly focused its activities in the northern countryside of Latakia, all the way to the western countryside of Hama, and the Idlib fronts at that time. These jihadist groups within the operations room rejected the Sochi agreement reached between Turkey and Russia in September 2018, which provided for the establishment of a demilitarized zone between the regime-held and the opposition-held areas in Idlib.

On May 3, 2020, Ansar al-Tawhid announced its defection from the Rouse the Believers operations room, which at the time seemed to be a maneuver to avoid confrontation with HTS that was at odds and clashing with Hurras al-Din, one of the most fundamentalist groups in the operations room.