Rantburg

Today's Front Page   View All of Wed 05/28/2025 View Tue 05/27/2025 View Mon 05/26/2025 View Sun 05/25/2025 View Sat 05/24/2025 View Fri 05/23/2025 View Thu 05/22/2025
2020-06-09 Syria-Lebanon-Iran
Syria jihadist-regime clashes leave 41 dead
[AlAhram] An al-Qaeda offshoot led an offensive Monday against regime forces in northwest Syria, sparking festivities that left 19 pro-government fighters and 22 jihadists dead, a war monitor said.

"Jihadist factions led by Hurras al-Deen
...the current incarnation of non-Syrian Al Qaeda in Syria...
launched an assault on two villages in Sahl al-Ghab," a region of the central province of Hama, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

They briefly seized the villages of al-Fatatra and al-Manara, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said.

But regime forces took them back just hours later amid Russian air strikes and intense shelling, the Britannia-based monitor said.

Abdel Rahman said the festivities left 19 government soldiers and 22 jihadists dead.

The country's official SANA news agency also reported the attack on "two Syrian army positions," saying it involved "explosive-rigged vehicles and jacket wallahs".

Citing a military source, it said the situation was now under control after the jihadists were forced to pull out under regime fire.

The offensive was launched from within the Idlib region, which is controlled by jihadists and rebels and is the last bastion of resistance to Damascus after nine years of devastating civil war.

A truce reached on March 6 has largely stemmed fighting in the region, which Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
Oppressor of the Syrians and the Lebs...
has vowed to fully retake.

Hurras al-Deen is a relatively small but powerful gang led by al-Qaeda loyalists.

It is a rival of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, formerly al-Nusra, before that it was called something else
...al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliate, from which sprang the Islamic State...
, an alliance of Islamist factions dominated by former members of al-Qaeda's ex-Syria affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra
...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli al-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ...
-- although the two groups cooperate at times.

The Idlib truce brokered by regime ally Russia and rebel backer The Sick Man of Europe Turkey
...Qatar's satrapy in Asia Minor...
has largely kept Syrian and Russian warplanes out of the region's skies.

The calm came as the novel coronavirus (aka COVID19 or Chinese Plague)
...the twenty first century equivalent of bubonic plague, only instead of killing off a third of the population of Europe it kills 3.4 percent of those who notice they have it. It seems to be fond of the elderly, especially Iranian politicians and holy men...
pandemic spread across the Middle East.

Aid groups had warned that an outbreak of the COVID-19 illness in the Idlib region could cause a humanitarian disaster of previously unseen proportions.
Posted by trailing wife 2020-06-09 04:17|| || Front Page|| [11131 views ]  Top
 File under: al-Qaeda 

18:32 technochitlin
18:19 Angstrom
17:48 49 Pan
17:38 Lord Garth
17:29 alanc
17:09 BrerRabbit
16:13 Pancho Poodle8452
16:08 Beavis
16:08 Lord Garth
15:52 Lord Garth
15:28 trailing wife
15:26 Pancho Poodle8452
15:26 trailing wife
14:34 Frank G
14:28 Melancholic
14:27 NoMoreBS
14:14 swksvolFF
14:12 swksvolFF
13:54 mossomo
13:51 mossomo
13:50 NoMoreBS
13:50 Abu Uluque
13:44 Abu Uluque
13:41 NoMoreBS









Paypal:
Google
Search WWW Search rantburg.com