Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Lord of the Baath...
, a monitoring group and other sources said on Sunday.
The hard boyz launched a counter-offensive after government forces, backed by allied bad boy groups, last week recaptured the villages on the Sahl al-Ghab plain, which lies close to the city of Hama and is crucial to the defence of coastal mountains that are the heartland of Assad's minority Alawite sect.
The holy warriors' 'Army of Fatah' alliance includes al Qaeda's Syrian wing, the Nusra Front, the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham
...a Syria jihadi group made up of Islamists and salafists, not that there's that much difference, formed into a brigade. They make up the main element of the Islamic Front but they don't profess adoration of al-Qaeda and they've been fighting (mainly for survival) against the Islamic State. Their leadership was wiped out at a single blow by a suicide kaboom at a crowded basement meeting in September, 2014...
group and other factions.
On Sunday, the Britannia-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Islamist fighters' counter-offensive had forced the Syrian army to withdraw from such villages as Mansoura, Zeyara and Tal Waset towards bases northwest of Hama city.
Seven government warplanes and helicopters carried out 80 strikes on the villages located on the plain, the Observatory added.
A source close to the Syrian government confirmed the rebel advances in the area.
The hard boyz have made gains in several parts of Syria in recent months, including capturing most of Idlib province to the northeast of the Sahl al-Ghab plain.
Last month Assad alluded to military setbacks when he said the army had been forced to give up some areas in order to hold onto more important ones
A quarter of a million people have died and more than 10 million driven from their homes in Syria's four-year civil war that has left large swathes of the country in the hands of Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
bad boys.