Battles intensified in northwest Syria on Friday after insurgents mounted an attack to repel an army offensive that has pounded the country’s last major rebel stronghold for weeks. State news agency SANA said the army absorbed the new attack and reinforced its frontline positions after fierce clashes with militants overnight. It said insurgents fired shells at a village in the northern Hama countryside. Insurgent factions said they seized three key villages in the Hama countryside late on Thursday in their counterattack. They denied reports that government forces had recovered the positions and said army units were suffering heavy losses as fighting raged on Friday. The violence in Idlib province and a strip of nearby Hama has marked the biggest military escalation between President Bashar al-Assad and his insurgent enemies since last summer. Tens of thousands of people have fled their homes, many of them sheltering […]