BEIRUT – The Latest on the fight against the Islamic State group (all times local):
2:15 p.m.
Syrian opposition activists say the Islamic State group has regained control of the ancient town of Palmyra nine months after it was driven out by Russian-backed Syrian government forces.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Palmyra Coordination group say IS militants fought their way into the town on Sunday, forcing government forces to retreat to the south.
Russia had earlier said that it helped Syrian troops repel an attack on the town by launching more than 60 airstrikes. IS has been advancing on the town in recent days, capturing areas on its outskirts at a time when Syrian forces are focused on driving rebels out of the northern city of Aleppo.
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Noon
Russia says its air force has helped Syrian troops repulse an Islamic State attack on the historic town of Palmyra.
The Russian Defense Ministry said Sunday that it carried out 64 airstrikes overnight that killed 300 IS militants and destroyed the extremists' vehicles and artillery.
Palmyra is home to towering 2,000-year-old ruins and was a major tourist attraction before the civil war broke out in 2011. IS seized the town last year and held it for 10 months before being driven out by Russian-backed Syrian forces in March.
The militants have advanced on Palmyra in recent days, with reports of heavy fighting within the town itself. Syria's army has been largely focused on the northern city of Aleppo, where it is waging a major offensive against Syrian rebels.
Well given Assad only has 20,000 effectives and relies on Hezbollah, IRGC, Shia Militias, and Putin to keep him afloat, this was inevitable. Assad and Russia thinned everything out to seize Aleppo and hold the Homs-Hama-Ithriya-Aleppo Road while doing so and IS saw its chance.
Well back to Thanas crying over the worthless stone ruins there rather than the innocent people IS will be brutalizing.
Dumbass, learn to not paste the link into the thread title. I have corrected it for you.
Also, your petty jabs at Thanas just show how much of a dumbass child you are. Wake the fuck up, no one here cares about your view of the situation or character attacks on other mods - except yourself.
Russian airstrikes have forced Islamic State fighters from the centre of the Unesco world heritage city of Palmyra in Syria, hours after they had attempted to retake it.
The Russian attack forced the militants to retreat to the outskirts, a local monitoring group said. The Russian defence ministry said the strikes had killed more than 300 Isis fighters and destroyed 11 tanks and vehicles.
The Syrian army also sent reinforcements to the city, reportedly diverting troops from Aleppo.
Isis held Palmyra from May 2015 until it was forced out in March this year. But it started a surprise advance on Thursday and entered the city on Saturday.
Russian war planes carried out more than 60 strikes overnight, halting the offensive, Russia’s defence ministry said on Sunday. Militants have been pushed to the outskirts where fighting continues, the BBC reported.
“Russian air force planes carried out 64 airstrikes against the positions, convoys and advancing reserves of militants,” a defence ministry statement said. “Over the past night, Syrian government troops with active support of the Russian air force thwarted all terrorist attacks on Palmyra. The attacking militants actively used car bombs with suicide bombers, armoured vehicles and rocket artillery.”
On Saturday, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human rights monitor said IS jihadis had taken back most of the city and surrounded the airport. During its previous Isis occupation Islamists beheaded the archaeological director and destroyed a number of monuments including two 2,000-year-old temples, an arch and funerary towers. The city is considered strategically important by the group because of its proximity to oilfields. ...
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Lì paludi, minacce, cecchini coi fucili, documenti, file notturne e clandestini
Qui incontri, lotte, passi sincronizzati, colori, capannelli non autorizzati,
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...La tranquillità è importante ma la libertà è tutto!
K. A. Pital wrote:And today's news was that ISIS was again driven out of Palmyra by coordinated attacks from Russian AF and Assad troops - so the news is a bit old, I feel
They're back in again, so it looks like this is going to be back-and-forth for a while.
Aleppo looks like it might fall soon. With that the government will just send troops to deal with IS again in Palmyra.
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Pretty much, but it could take several months. The Assadist government has never managed a high speed anything against them, and its lasts several offensives into the desert were all completely defeated. I'm really not surprised Palmyra fell again, its come close several times before and Assadist incompetence is near unlimited outside of a couple small brigades, and what remains of the Republican Guard that only fights around Damascus.
ISIL has the city, the old citadel and two of the three actual passes through the mountains, they'll probably take the third today as they still have diversionary attacks going on further west. With typical Assadist Elite skill something like a whole battalion worth of functional tanks and artillery was abandon in working order along with who knows how much ammo.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
There were two attacks, the first wave contained multiple VBIEDS and was repelled.
The second wave contained 4000 fighters and possibly 100 veichles, at this Point the SAA retreated which was probably a good idea unless they wanted to end up on sharpened sticks.
Many SAA types online claim that the US jammed all radio transmissions in the area and had multiple UAVs monitoring the area.
The really stupid part is they still do not seem to have learned to burn or bomb equipment left behind.
Since Palmyra was a big pr op for Putin I'm sure the US would not mind him getting pied in the face.
Many SAA types online claim that the US jammed all radio transmissions in the area and had multiple UAVs monitoring the area.
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That claim strikes me as a desperate attempt to make their team not look like a bunch of amateur clowns by blaming the US for the loss somehow. All the abandoned gear kind of speaks otherwise.
I can't blame Assad's guys too much for the rout though. Most of their troops probably got absolutely no training before being put on the front line, especially true for those units put in defensive positions. Being mostly forced conscripts and little leadership doesn't improve performance either.
I must confess, I've not been following this closely as I should. "Close to taking Aleppo" has been on the news most nights here and I keep thinking "again?".
Any decent area maps that aren't out of date or bias trumpets?
"Aid, trade, green technology and peace." - Hans Rosling.
"Welcome to SDN, where we can't see the forest because walking into trees repeatedly feels good, bro." - Mr Coffee
What a crock of shit. God those Assadists and Putinists and all the other assorted cheerleaders were just so full of shit then, huh? What a shitshow. Their sheer incompetence is unbelievable and horrifying and I guess this is why people *want* to believe that Daesh is being equipped with CIA laser rifles and Stark technology power armor and mobile suits and sonic electronic ball breakers and phased plasma rifles.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
Looks like total Assadist victory in Aleppo with about 25,000 people in a final surrender, and at last some of them being allowed to leave the city.
At Palmyra the government held the T4 air base and pumping station fortifications though the last several days of Daesh attacks. Assadism sucks fighting Daesh because that's how much it sucked and still sucks as a government plain and simple. The excuses are pathetic.
RUMINT is also now around that Russia is sending 500 Chechen troops to retake Palmyra. If that happens or not I dunno.
The fact is Assad has always been extremely vulnerable to this group, the idea that it's a tool if the US is preposterous on any sane evaluation of the actual military reality of anything. Like the mass depopulation deliberately inflicted for four straight years by government planes and missiles. Assadism is based on decades of delusion and bullshit. It's all about keeping on inept family in power, and unlike the Kim family in Korea they don't have a 50 year head start on brainwashing people to love them.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
And I guess geographically, Syria is not like North Korea that has an advantage where... its northern border is that of another foreign repressive regime maintaining a tight seal on its borders, whereas the south has a giant minefield that the NK government itself is maintaining, whereas east and west are just bodies of water. Syria is in the Middle East, the Middle East is a vibrant cross-point that makes it very... y'know, rowdy.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
Yup and eastern Syria was a big playground zone for Sunni insurgents and terrorist groups from 2003 onward, and I damn well bet more then a few local sects before that. Criminal gangs and smuggles were and are huge in that part of the world too, the present super 'US won't say shit about this normally' ISIL illegal oil trade only builds on Saddam's massive smuggling Empire. Whatever foreign aid they got, that kind of massive activity undermines society and guess what, you allow it enough and people might decide they can be king of themselves instead.
That's why the whole east imploded into rebel and then more unified ISIL control so easily, it was already on the edge of government control in the first place. Economically neglected too even though all the governments oil and gas supplies were in the east. Egypt has as similar structural problem on the edge of explosion, the government has historically treated upper and lower Egypt differently on a broad basis, and exploited that divide to help maintain its own power. Hopefully they will be able to find a solution to this before they fall apart into a civil war any further.
Oh also ask yourselves how that huge rebel pocket near Damascus still has guns and ammo after 5 years fighting? The amount of government-rebel smuggling in this war is crazy high. It was absurdly high BTW in the US Civil War too, more traffic entered the south from the north by wagon then by blockade runner ship. So this is NORMAL. But Assadism sure can't admit how much power has really slipped.
Last edited by Sea Skimmer on 2016-12-13 09:51pm, edited 1 time in total.
"This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
Honorius wrote:
Well back to Thanas crying over the worthless stone ruins there rather than the innocent people IS will be brutalizing.
You will either immediately retract and apologize or provide proof that I have ever stated such a thing.
If you fail to do so within 24 hours I will take appropriate measures.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
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A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
Coastal developed places vs. inland neglected but resource-extrated regions... Jeez. Maybe climate change and rising sea levels and everything being near the ocean will help us, turn everyone and everywhere into chill archipelagic coastal types.
"DO YOU WORSHIP HOMOSEXUALS?" - Curtis Saxton (source) shroom is a lovely boy and i wont hear a bad word against him - LUSY-CHAN! Shit! Man, I didn't think of that! It took Shroom to properly interpret the screams of dying people - PeZook Shroom, I read out the stuff you write about us. You are an endless supply of morale down here. :p - an OWS street medic Pink Sugar Heart Attack!
You are a childisch, ignorant little kid you know that?
Or perhaps you really have the same morals as your typical wahabi/taliban extremist who revels in obscurantism and iconoclasm.
Thanas wrote:If you fail to do so within 24 hours I will take appropriate measures.
Not that it excuses his editorial comment, but his profile indicates that he hasn't been online since posting this, so it's entirely possible that he hasn't seen your response.
Доверяй, но проверяй
"Ugh. I hate agreeing with Zontargs." -- Alyrium Denryle
"What you are is abject human trash who is very good at dodging actual rule violations while still being human trash." -- Alyrium Denryle iustitia socialis delenda est
Thanas wrote:If you fail to do so within 24 hours I will take appropriate measures.
Not that it excuses his editorial comment, but his profile indicates that he hasn't been online since posting this, so it's entirely possible that he hasn't seen your response.
Serves him right for shit-and-running, in that case.
Yeah, I've always taken the subtext of the Birther movement to be, "The rules don't count here! This is different! HE'S BLACK! BLACK, I SAY! ARE YOU ALL BLIND!?
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Destiny and fate are for those too weak to forge their own futures. Where we are 'supposed' to be is irrelevent.
Thanas wrote:If you fail to do so within 24 hours I will take appropriate measures.
Not that it excuses his editorial comment, but his profile indicates that he hasn't been online since posting this, so it's entirely possible that he hasn't seen your response.
Serves him right for shit-and-running, in that case.
Sent him an email and extended the deadline till Monday.
After that I have had it.
Whoever says "education does not matter" can try ignorance
------------
A decision must be made in the life of every nation at the very moment when the grasp of the enemy is at its throat. Then, it seems that the only way to survive is to use the means of the enemy, to rest survival upon what is expedient, to look the other way. Well, the answer to that is 'survival as what'? A country isn't a rock. It's not an extension of one's self. It's what it stands for. It's what it stands for when standing for something is the most difficult! - Chief Judge Haywood
------------ My LPs
"
- PeZook
