Syrian forces on Friday evening repelled an attack by al-Nusra terrorists in the areas of al-Hamamiyat, Tal al-Sakhr, al-Habbit, Kafrzeta, al-Arbaeen, and al-Jabeen in Hama, SANA reported.
A number of tanks and armored vehicles belonging to the terror group were destroyed in the counterattack.
Dozens of the militants also lost their lives and many others fled the battlefield, the report added.
The villages where the clashes broke out are located in a planned buffer zone which surrounds Idlib and also parts of the adjacent provinces of Aleppo and Hama.
Under a deal reached following a meeting between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in September, all militants should have withdrawn from the demilitarization zone by October 15.
However, al-Qaeda-linked Takfiri terrorists said they refuse to either leave the buffer zone or hand over their weapons.
Moscow believed that the 15-20 kilometer buffer zone would help stop attacks from Idlib-based militants on Syrian army positions and Russia's military bases in the flashpoint region.
Idlib and some surrounding areas are the last major bastions of Takfiri terrorists and anti-government militants in Syria, where the Syrian government has in recent months retaken much of the territory it had lost since the conflict erupted in the country in 2011.