The goal of the rebels is to seize Homs so Assad won't be able to reach his Alawite homeland in Latakia on the coast from the capital in Damascus.
Posted on 12/05/2024 6:33:28 AM PST by MinorityRepublican
Syrian rebels captured the key city of Hama on Thursday, bringing the insurgents a major victory after a lightning advance across northern Syria and dealing a new blow to President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian allies. The Syrian army said it was redeploying outside the city "to preserve civilians lives and prevent urban combat" after what it called intense clashes. Rebels said they were preparing to keep marching south towards Homs, Syria's great crossroads city that links the capital Damascus to the north and coast.
"Your time has come," said a rebel operations room in an online post, calling on city residents to rise up in revolution.
Al Jazeera television broadcast what it said were images of rebels inside Hama, some of them greeting civilians near a roundabout while others drove in military vehicles and on mopeds. The rebels took the main northern city of Aleppo last week and have since pushed south from their enclave in northwest Syria. Fighting has raged around villages outside Hama for two days.
The fall of Hama, which was in government hands throughout the civil war triggered by a 2011 rebellion against Assad, will send shockwaves through Damascus and fears of a continued rebel march south. Assad relied heavily on Russian and Iranian backing throughout the most intense years of the conflict, helping him to claw back most territory and the biggest cities before front lines froze in 2020. The collapse of pro-government forces in northern Syria over the past week underlines the problems that alliance has faced since.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Question - are these rebels making sure all the civilians are out of the area before they attack? If not is the UN going to condemn their tactics and flagrant disregard for innocent life?
“Suleiman Al-Khalidi and Timour Azhari” for reuters......no bias there I’m sure. *eyes rolling*
Another piece of ww3 advancing on the board!?!
The goal of the rebels is to seize Homs so Assad won't be able to reach his Alawite homeland in Latakia on the coast from the capital in Damascus.
I thought the Russians and Assad went out to stop them at Aleppo??? Is Erdogan behind the “rebels” and hoping to make a Turkey-aligned zone in Syria?? Maybe everyone thinks Russia is too busy in Ukraine to help Assad much right now.
I thought Hama would fall within a day. I was wrong. It fell within the hour:
“To: FRinCanada2
If true, Hama will fall today.
The role of Arab officers is to hold the pistol to the backs of their troops so they point their guns the correct direction.
16 posted on 12/5/2024, 6:44:30 AM by Uncle Miltie (The ACLU’s Chase Strangio, a woman with a beard, argued that two-year-olds should be castrated.)”
The US is behind all of this.
Wow!
This is a dramatic collapse of the Syrian Arab Army.
If the next city down the highway (Homs) falls to the rebels, that would be a major Strategic victory for them, endangering the Russian bases, and the Assad regime itself.
It looks like the only force that could ride to the regimes rescue, are the Shi’te militias in Iraq, that fought ISIS in intense combat a few years ago (Mosul was the biggest urban battle since Stalingrad).
Those Hashd al Shaabi militias were officially incorporated into the Iraqi Government force structure during the war, so it is unclear if Iran can send them into Syria, without the Government of Iraq participating in the conflict.
The Government of Iraq hates ISIS (who are still mixed in with the rebels), but the Assad regime is a Ba’ath Party dictatorship, like Saddam Hussein’s was.
The old Sunni/Shia conflict is still burning hot.
If it doesn’t stay limited to surrogates, Turkey and Iran could go at it - Sunni vs.Shia. Without Russian support in such a direct conflict, Iran would be toast.
LOL! Things that will be ignored!
Sunnis are a majority in Syria and I’d expect Erdogan wants ALL of the country under Turkish hegemony. The coming massacre of the minorities, Kurds, Christians of different stripes, Alawites, Druze, etc. protected under sixty plus years of Assad family Alawi iron fisted rule, will be horrific. The Turks are experienced at such.
This only applies to Israel. Islamic rebels are not held to any laws or standards. Liberals only hold Jews to standards.
My guess is the Iran will fly in some foot soldiers to Damascus right now.
I expect the same.
Iraqi Shiite militias are having problems crossing the “American Protectorate” region along the Iraq-Syria border.
The Iraqi Shiites are about the only reinforcements now available to Assad. Unless Iran decides to send zctual Iranians of course.
They could fly in Iraqi cannon-fodder to replace Hezbollah.
Another map.
This guy sounded like a spokesperson, but trying not to sound like one
Still, the info. about the tactic used to take Hama makes sense. And if this rebel group wants "legitimacy" later, expending the craziest jihadis and foreign fighters up front makes sense too.
Apparently the vaunted(?) Russian air support has been insufficient. Pretty interesting, given it has no real opposition.
They're all in Ukraine.
But I bet Putin will send some planes to Syria now.
There's a limit to what the Russian Air Force can do in Ukraine due to their air defense system. That's not the case in Syria.
Hahaha
Even the term “rebel” is funny.
With the Turks, ISIS/ISIL, Kurdish, US, even some Israeli support on one side and the Russians (tied up in Ukraine) and Iran (also tied up now in Lebanon) on the other, Syria has become easier pickings.
IHMO, this is what the Ukraine at a macro level was really about. Theory follows, but there is some evendence to suggest this is the case: We pushed the Ukraine crisis to where we KNEW war would ensue. This isn’t really about Ukraine for us. More so about weakening Russia on the world stage, where we have been pressuring them in Syria, Libya, Venezuela, and flat out invaded and occupy Iraq, all major oil producing nations.
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