Konflikten i Syrien

Syria: Countdown Starts for Army's Aleppo Liberation Operations

TEHRAN (FNA)- The Syrian army and its allies are preparing to launch a large-scale offensive on the Takfiri terrorists who are currently controlling the strategic Anadan Plains, Northwest of Aleppo province, a military source said on Thursday.

According to the source, hundreds of fresh forces have arrived in Aleppo today to join pro-gov't forces in their imminent operations to recapture the Anadan Plain.

The source stressed that the Syrian Armed Forces will be fully backed by the Syrian and Russian air forces, which have already begun their aerial campaign over Northern Aleppo.

The Syrian army has been reinvigorating its forces in Anadan for at least a week now.

Russian Fighter Jets Cut Off Terrorists' Communition Lines with Turkish Intelligence Agency

TEHRAN (FNA)- The Russian air force targeted and destroyed the telecommunication towers in Northern Syria near the borders with Turkey and cut off the terrorists' internet and lines of communication with Turkey's MIT intelligence agency.

According to a report by al-Mayadeen news channel, the Russian warplanes smashed two telecommunication towers at the Syrian-Turkish borders, disconnecting the terrorists' contacts with the Turkish intelligence agency.

Other sources said the terrorists who have be caught off hand are now thinking of ways to reestablish their contacts with Turkey.

Earlier reports said that the European satellite operators give terrorists, specially the ISIL members, an opportunity to upload propaganda, exchange information and possibly even prepare terrorist attacks.

Huge. Among the spoils Zinki made in Mallah: a T-90 seized from pro-Regime forces. N. #Aleppo

US-led airstrike in northern Syria kills 30 civilians: Monitoring group

At least 30 civilians have lost their lives when the so-called US-led coalition launched an aerial attack purportedly against a position of the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group in Syria’s northern province of Aleppo, a monitoring group says.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the airstrike struck the city of Manbij, located 446 kilometers (277 miles) north of the capital Damascus, on Thursday.
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The US-led coalition has been conducting airstrikes against what are said to be the Daesh terrorists inside Syria since September 2014 without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate. The coalition has repeatedly been accused of targeting and killing civilians. It has also been largely incapable of fulfilling its declared aim of destroying Daesh.

CIA and Pentagon Bicker While Russia Wipes Out U.S.-Backed Rebels

American-armed rebels are in deep trouble in the city of Aleppo. Washington’s response: Escalate the fight—between the U.S. military and intelligence communities.
U.S.-backed opposition forces in Syria’s largest city are facing a ferocious Russian-led assault, raising fears that the rebels could be eliminated in a matter of weeks.
So how are the Pentagon and the intelligence community responding?
By catfighting among themselves.

Two Department of Defense officials told The Daily Beast that they are not eager to support the rebels in the city of Aleppo because they’re seen as being affiliated with al Qaeda in Syria, or Jabhat al Nusra. The CIA, which supports those rebel groups, rejects that claim, saying alliances of convenience in the face of a mounting Russian-led offensive have created marriages of battlefield necessity, not ideology.

“It is a strange thing that DoD hall chatter mimics Russian propaganda,” one U.S. official, who supports the intelligence community position, wryly noted to Pentagon claims that the opposition and Nusra are one in the same.

But even if the rebels were completely separated from Nusra, there would still be something of a strategic conflict with U.S. military goals. The rebels in Aleppo, these Pentagon officials note, are fighting the Bashar al-Assad regime; the American military effort, on the other hand, is primarily about defeating the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

“We have no role in Aleppo. The forces we are supporting… are fighting ISIS,” one defense official explained to The Daily Beast.

Charles Lister ‏@Charles_Lister 9 maj
@theOSINTblog @StrangerThnRedz Faylaq al-Sham passed the vetting process about 10 months ago. They’ve had TOWs since at least January 2016.

The rebel commander was nervous. He had changed phone numbers and been difficult to reach before finally agreeing to meet in Antakya, a city near the border with war-torn Syria that has long swarmed with rebels, refugees, and spies. On the road to an out-of-the-way hotel, he told the driver to avoid the main route through town. “It’s better not to drive among all the people,” he said.
It was an open secret that the commander had once received cash and weapons from the CIA, part of a covert U.S. program that backs rebel groups against both ISIS and the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad.

When his battalion was eventually driven from Syria by its jihadi rivals, like a number of U.S.-backed groups, he pleaded with his U.S. handlers for better support, but it wasn’t enough. So he was, he said, “out of the game.”

Now, he said, sitting at a quiet table at the hotel, he had received an offer that could bring him back in — and potentially make him even stronger than before.
He was being recruited, he said, to work for the U.S.’s rival in Syria: Russia.
“They told me, ‘We will support you forever. We won’t leave you on your own like your old friends did,’” he said. “Honestly, I’m still thinking about it.”
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The commander knew that joining forces with Russia would mean a personal concession that the regime had won. On the other hand, he reasoned, Russia was at least offering, in contrast to the U.S., a way for the bloodshed to come to an end. “The Americans just want to buy time,” he said. “But the Russians are here to work.”

He headed back to the car, lost in thought. “I cannot decide,” he said. “It’s like walking down a dark tunnel, and you don’t know if you will find the light.”