Posted on 08/24/2014 1:38:18 PM PDT by Perdogg
) - Islamic State militants stormed an air base in northeast Syria on Sunday, capturing it from government forces after days of fighting that cost more than 500 lives, a monitoring group said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 346 Islamic State fighters were killed and more than 170 members of government forces had died since Tuesday in the fight over Tabqa base, making it one of the deadliest confrontations between the two groups since the start of Syria's war.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Sounds like the defenders died hard.
Good for them.
A moabist proposal
Massive Ordinance Air Blast, aka "Mother of all bombs"
It didn’t say how many days the battle went, but these guys are pikers compared to two day of the battle of Shiloh and it was fought with cannon, muskets and muzzle loading rifles.
Union casualties were 13,047 (1,754 killed, 8,408 wounded, and 2,885 missing); Grant’s army bore the brunt of the fighting over the two days, with casualties of 1,513 killed, 6,601 wounded, and 2,830 missing or captured. Confederate casualties were 10,699 (1,728 killed, 8,012 wounded, and 959 missing or captured).
This total of 23,746 men represented more than the American battle-related casualties of the American Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Mexican-American War combined
Well, since IS can’t USE the base now, why do they want it?
I can’t shake that photo of those bastards beheading Christian children. There are no words.
But there were more than 100,000 men involved at Shiloh.
The battles of the Syrian-Iraqi-ISIS war involve at most a few thousand on either side. The casualty RATE of those involved could indeed be very high.
Several reasons.
It was a government garrison. Enemies are enemies.
This bunch was close to a major ISIS controlled population center. So logistics of concentrating sufficient numbers to overrun the garrison was probably a major factor.
Arms and ammo. The Syrians have huge stockpiles and they are probably kept at these undermanned bases. That’s a treasure for ISIS. I expect the Syrians haven’t got the manpower even to guard it much less to destroy it all. 170 dead out of that garrison, most likely mostly executed prisoners, suggests that enormous base was defended by less than 1000 men.
A runway is a runway. If its in reasonably good shape its an asset for resupply from the ISIS sponsors (Turkey?) or from the international black market. Useful to have such a thing right by one of the major population centers.
But why didn’t this runway/armory/base have air power to defend it?
> The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 346 Islamic State fighters were killed and more than 170 members of government forces had died since Tuesday...
Thanks Perdogg.
Never knew Muslims had airplanes...I thought they had flying carpets...
I assume the Syrian air force disabled all aircraft and weapons left behind.
They did, see the mention of heavy air raids killing hundreds of ISIS guys.
Thats not enough though, if there aren’t enough troops to hold the perimeter. Isis probably broke through one or more points in a thin chain of posts and took the rest from behind, isolating various groups as they tried to withraw after the breakthrough. I am assuming thats what happened because that seems to have been what happened in other cases recently.
Aircraft probably, these would be a problem to restore to working order anyway and anything flyable was probably away from that place months ago. Ammunition however would be in masses of bunkers spread over a considerable area. It would take time after a bug out order to prep and blow everything.
Those guys don’t look much like Arabs to me. Chechnyans maybe?
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