Rebels were administering justice and providing local services, including the distribution of cooking gas and food in these areas.

[27] A group called the Damascus Falcons, which has 1,000 members, destroyed a military camp near to its headquarters in a village in Idlib province.

[31] It was reported on 26 June that around 280 soldiers defected from the army on the main highway running from Idlib to Aleppo and clashed with government troops.

One day later, armed clashed in Idlib resulted in the death of six civilians, three rebels and five soldiers, including a colonel from the elite Republican Guard.

[36] In late June, a BBC reporter sneaked into Syria and confirmed that the Syrian rebels were growing in numbers, were better armed and that they controlled large swathes of land in the north of Idlib governorate.

[37] The Turkish government reported on 3 July that 85 soldiers, including a general and a number of other high-ranking officers, had defected from the Syrian army and crossed into Turkey.

[44] On 13 July, the opposition activist group Syrian Observatory reported that 18 rebels had been killed in attack in the Idlib Governorate by the army.

[47] On 18 July, following bombing in Damascus which claimed lives of several most prominent government officials, troops reportedly withdrew from Maarrat al-Nu'man area.

"After clashes that lasted 12 hours, rebels destroyed a military security post and captured 50 regime troops, including 14 officers.

[67] On 13 August, Al Jazeera reported that the rebels had returned to Ariha and had managed to block a key route in the town that led to Aleppo.

[74] By September 2012, the Syrian Air Force base at Abu al-Thuhur in eastern Idlib Governorate was partially besieged by rebel fighters.

The fighting lasted 12 hours and resulted in at least 40 dead among the Syrian army forces, including five officers, and nine rebel fighters.

[75] On 8 October, the rebels launched an offensive to capture the town of Maarrat al-Nu'man, which holds a strategic position through which all government reinforcements from Damascus heading toward Aleppo would need to come through.

[93] On 3 November the FSA had attacked the Taftanaz military airport in the northern province of Idlib in the early hours using rocket launchers and at least three tanks.

Video posted online showed heavy fighting, with the FSA using tanks and rocket launchers against government forces.

[96] On 5 November a Syrian Air Force attack killed at least 20 FSA members in the town of Harem, including the rebel brigade commander, Basil Eissa.

[97] On 25 December, rebel forces announced that they had fully taken control of the town of Harem near the Turkish border after weeks of heavy fighting with the Syrian Army.

[98] On 26 December, violent clashes are still ongoing, between regular forces from one side and Jihadists from the al-Nusra front as well as other rebel battalions on the other, in the perimeter of the Wadi al-Deif encampment, al-Hamdiya, A'in Qrei' and al-Za'lana military checkpoints.

[99] On 29 December rebels shot down a helicopter that was flying over Saraqib and its surrounding area, It crashed and burned by the Taftanaz military airport.

The towns of Deir Sharqi and Maar Shurin, which are by the Wadi al-Dayf military base, are being bombarded by the air force.

He stated that the rebel attack on Taftanaz had in fact failed, with the base being still in government hands, and that there had been no fighting in the area for the previous two days.

[106] On 9 January, Al-Jazeera reported that units of the Free Syrian Army, supported by the Al-Nusra Front, had taken control of a large part of the Taftanaz military base.

[108] Rebel fighters and militants from various Islamic groups, including the jihadist Ahrar ash-Sham and al Qaeda linked al-Nusra Front, took part in the offensive, an opposition spokesman said Friday.

They say they've seized control of buildings, ammunition and military equipment at the base in Idlib province, signaling a major blow to President Bashar al-Assad's force.

The strategic base is used by government forces to send explosives to areas in the north, according to the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

[109][110] The Syrian military struck back hours after rebels captured the base, launching air strikes on the area, According to the SOHR.

An online video showed about half a dozen soldiers, reportedly pilots, in a shallow hole who were shot en masse, execution style, by al-Nusra militants for their refusal to defect to the rebels.

More than 10 fighters and 19 soldiers were killed in heavy fighting inside the complex, which is the last major Assad stronghold west of Idlib city.

Four snipers hid behind a makeshift wall of white stones piled atop one another, a little over waist-high, their scopes trained on the road below.

Several other men, rifles at the ready, stood behind a thin cinderblock wall, a structure unlikely to offer any protection should the tanks stationed several hundred meters away near a loyalist outpost on a hill overlooking the highway turn their turrets in the rebels' direction.