Syria civil war: Rebels set sights on Homs as Lebanon and Jordan close their borders

[EnterpriseSovereign]

Syria civil war: Rebels set sights on Homs as Lebanon and Jordan close their borders

Countries neighbouring Syria have begun closing their borders as Islamist insurgents set their sights on seizing the strategic city of Homs.

Thousands of people have fled the city, which lies on the road to Damascus and connects it with the vital coastal regions that are strongholds of support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Pro-government media and war monitoring organisations reported that the rebels entered two towns near Homs on Friday morning and were fewer than five miles from the city's edge.

The rebels captured the major city of Hama on Thursday after three days of clashes with government forces.

Lebanon and Jordan closed most of their border crossings with Syria on Friday as the conflict in the Middle East continued to escalate.

One of the main crossings into Jordan has been seized by the insurgents, while crossings into Lebanon have been bombed by Israel.

Israel said it will be reinforcing the part of the Golan Heights it occupies which sits on the border between Syria and Israel. On Friday Russia also urged all of its citizens to leave Syria.

If the insurgents capture Homs they will control the country's first, third and fourth largest cities, with only Damascus out of their control.

The capture of Hama was a major blow to Al Assad, whose government was thrown into a major crisis when Aleppo was taken just days before.

The country's military said several troops were killed in the clashes in Hama, accusing insurgents of relying on suicide attacks. It said it redeployed from Hama and took positions outside the city to protect the lives of civilians.

However, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the de facto leader of the Syrian insurgency, described the advance on Hama as a "conquering that is not vengeful, but one of mercy and compassion".

Al-Golani's group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, is the most powerful insurgency in Syria. It is a Sunni Islamist organisation which has long been involved in the country's conflict.

Also referred to as HTS or the Organisation for the Liberation of the Levant, the group has historic ties to Al-Qaeda, which it renounced in 2016 due to ideological differences. It is considered a terrorist group by the United Nations, and Western countries including the US and the UK.

Al-Golani told CNN that his main goal is to "overthrow" al-Assad and seize Damascus.

While HTS is leading the offensive, an umbrella group of Turkish-backed Syrian militias called the Syrian National Army – previously known as the Free Syrian Army – has also been pushing back Assad's forces, including in Aleppo.

There, the Syrian National Army has been fighting not only government forces but also Kurdish-led groups, with tens of thousands of Kurds fleeing the country's northeastern region.

Other rebel groups have also reportedly begun joining in on the offensive with fighters from Syria's Druze religious minority attacking government positions in the south, according to CNN.

Aleppo's takeover marked the first opposition attack on the city since 2016 when a brutal Russian air campaign retook it for Assad after rebel forces had initially seized it.

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Intervention by Russia, Iran, Iranian-allied Hezbollah, and other militant groups has allowed Assad to remain in power.

However, with Russia preoccupied with its war in Ukraine, and Iran politically weakened by Israel decimating much of Hezbollah's leadership and the re-election of Donald Trump, opposition forces have taken advantage of the opportunity, with renewed fighting beginning on November 27.

Hama is known for the 1982 massacre of Hama, one of the most notorious in the modern Middle East, when security forces under Assad's late father, Hafez Assad, killed more than 10,000 people to crush a Muslim Brotherhood uprising.

[Elfdart]

However, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, the de facto leader of the Syrian insurgency, described the advance on Hama as a "conquering that is not vengeful, but one of mercy and compassion".

Another day, another ISIS/Daesh/Al Qaeda head-chopper being touted as the new George Washington (to be fair, Salafi jihadists do share Washington's love of slavery and burning indigenous people out of their homes...). Funny thing is, this upstanding citizen has a $10 million bounty on his head, posted by the FBI. This is a win-win for Uncle Sam: If he succeeds, Syria will "benefit" in the same way that Libya did when the Empire did regime change there in 2011: open air slave markets, women losing all rights, beheadings, pogroms against minorities like black Africans, etc. If Assad kills him, he can't collect the reward anyway.


Mark Ames describes how monstrous these lunatics and their public relations agents like Bellingcat are. Warning: Ames' article shows photos of a Kurdish woman's severed head being dangled like a prize trout by a heroic member of Al Nusra -no doubt with "mercy and compassion". Unlike Hamas, Syria's "moderate rebels" really do behead children and commit mass rape.

ShamiWitness: When Bellingcat & Neocons Collaborated With The Most Influential ISIS Propagandist On Twitter
By Mark Ames

The ShamiWitness account was every bit as sick, sectarian and vile as you’d expect from ISIS’s leading Twitter account. In its brief gory heyday, ISIS was responsible for slaughtering somewhere between 50,000 – 100,000 people in Iraq and Syria, enslaving, raping and exterminating untold thousands of Yezidis and other minorities in the region. Which makes it all the more shocking how these western experts, most of whose careers are still thriving today, bigger than ever in fact, were able to get away with being accessories to ISIS propaganda and recruiting efforts. It wasn’t as though they couldn’t have known ShamiWitness was a monster. A year before ShamiWitness was unmasked, Michael Kelley called out reporters (including himself) for being accessories to ShamiWitness’s social media influence, but he was practically alone in that.

Here are a few gruesome examples of ShamiWitness’s Twitter account in action:

* In 2014, responding to reports out of Kobane that ISIS attackers were raping and mutilating female Kurdish soldiers, ShamiWitness gleefully tweeted:
* As his Islamic State heroes were posting selfies of their Kurdish female trophies [WARNING GRAPHIC]:
*…ShamiWitness tweeted out sick ISIS jokes about murdered Kurds like this:

ShamiWitness swooned over ISIS’s murder porn, relentlessly promoting and tweeting out ISIS execution and beheading videos on Twitter. ShamiWitness repeatedly tweeted out ISIS videos of American hostage Peter Kassig’s beheading execution within minutes after they were first posted, feeding bloodlust to his thousands of foreign jihadi followers.

Despite thousands of vile tweets like that, ShamiWitness was a popular figure among the Syria regime-change “expert” crowd. One of those experts who’s been in the news a lot lately is Eliot Higgins of the Atlantic Council/Bellingcat cyber-sleuth group. Bellingcat have made themselves darlings of the western press — and western intelligence agencies — with their investigative reports targeting NATO’s adversaries, primarily Russia and Syria. After making headlines for tying Russia to the downing of Malaysian Air Flight 17, and unmasking the alleged GRU poisoners in Salisbury, Higgins and his crew have received unanimous glowing press in the BBC, New York Times, Washington Post and elsewhere — along with funding from the Saudi-financed Atlantic Council, and the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a regime-change front set up by Reagan’s ghoulish CIA chief, Bill Casey. (The NED’s first chief, Allen Weinstein admitted to the Washington Post, “A lot of what we do today was done covertly twenty-five years ago by the CIA.”)

Biden is like the chief judge from Captain Blood: Sick and dying but still trying to kill off as many innocent people as humanly possible in some crazed effort to take them to hell with him when he goes.

[Crazedwraith]

BBC Live Feed

Everyone does live feeds now so no article to quote. But the Rebels have taken Damascus and Assad has fled the country.

[Elfdart]

Looks like Syrian Yazidis and Christians are going to join Palestinians on the "to be exterminated" list.

[Rogue 9]

Here, an article to quote, via NPR.

Syrian government falls to rebels, in stunning end to 50 year iron rule of the Assads
Updated December 8, 20248:18 AM ET

By Willem Marx

A rapid advance by Syrian rebel groups on the country's capital has led to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad's control of a nation his family had ruled for half a century.

Crowds celebrated the seismic political shift in the streets of Damascus overnight and into Sunday, as Syrian state television broadcast a statement from a group of rebels, one dressed in a black hoodie, who announced that all Syrian prisoners had been freed from jail and Assad had been deposed.

The man reading that statement on television, just hours after the city's fall, had echoed calls from the leading group in this lightning rebel offensive, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, demanding that citizens and fighters alike ensure the country's national institutions were protected. He ended his statement with a declaration after more than 13 years of bloody civil conflict: "Long Live a Free Syria."

Another separate video showed the country's prime minister, Ghazi al-Jalali, being escorted from his home by armed rebels to hand formal power to a committee formed from various rebel groups, known as the Syrian Military Operations Command.

Assad's downfall came less than two weeks after an initial incursion west of the country's second largest city, Aleppo, triggered a cascading series of routes and retreats by the demoralized Syrian military.

The British-based war monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said Assad had left the country to an undisclosed destination.

Hours later, Russia, which had long used its military to prop up the Assad regime against wide-ranging opposition forces, also said that the toppled president had left the country. The Russian foreign ministry did not say where he had gone.

"As a result of negotiations between B. Assad and a number of participants in the armed conflict on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, he decided to resign from the presidency and left the country, giving instructions for a peaceful transfer of power," the foreign ministry said in a statement. "Russia did not participate in these negotiations," it added.

Questions about what comes next

The United Nations, United States and other governments worldwide have acknowledged this weekend's events as a highly significant, watershed moment, with the U.N. calling for the rebels to host talks that can lead to a more inclusive government for the country.

The UN's lead envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, said the more than a decade of brutal civil war had left deep scars in Syria, but now was the time for all parties to prioritize dialogue, and he would be looking forward with "cautious hope" for the nation's new developments.

Efforts by the UN and others to build a successful transitional government will be complicated by the fact that Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist group that has led this offensive to topple al-Assad, is still designated as a terrorist organization by the U.N., U.S. and others. The group's leader, Abu Mohammed al-Golani, has however sought to present a far more moderate face in recent months, as analysts have told NPR.

But while Germany's leading diplomat has described al-Assad's toppling as a "great relief" for Syria's people, she has also cautioned against radicalization, particularly given what's expected to be HTS's leading role in any future form of government.

"The country must not now fall into the hands of other radicals," said Annalena Baerbock, the German foreign minister, "whatever form they take."

Iran, which together with Russia played a leading role in supporting al-Assad's rule for many years, made unverifiable claims that rebels had attacked its embassy in Damascus on Sunday, airing footage from a television network that seemed to show a diplomatic compound. However, diplomats had reportedly left the embassy before any attack, according to an online post in the Iranian newspaper The Tehran Times, which cited the country's foreign ministry.

Russia has long maintained an airbase and naval repair hub in Syria, but the Russian embassy in Damascus has said its staff are fine and those bases appear unharmed. Nonetheless, a leading foreign affairs lawmaker in the upper house of the Russian parliament has said Assad's departure will mean difficult times ahead for Syria, a country known for its patchwork mosaic of ethnicities, religions and political affiliations.

"Syria is a very difficult story, for everyone without exception," said Konstantin Kosachyov, who is deputy chair of the Russian Senate. "One way or another, the civil war will not end today, there are too many opposing interests and too many opposing forces."

"The situation has evolved very quickly," according to Phillippe Lazzarini, the head of the UN agency dedicated to Palestinian refugees, UNRWA. "It's like the fall down of a house of cards." He told NPR at a policy forum in Qatar that his organization's camps in Syria house around 400,000 people, but have largely remained calm with some services continuing to operate. He said he hoped the transition process would allow schools to reopen in the camps.

Israel heightens security, as Lebanon opens border crossings

Meanwhile in neighboring Israel, authorities are strengthening their security measures in the Golan Heights, the border region that Israel largely seized from Syria in the war of 1967.

The Israeli military said it had helped U.N. peacekeepers based in the region to stave off several armed men over the weekend, but would not interfere in Syria's internal events, and would simply keep certain areas of the Golan Heights closed to act as a buffer zone for security reasons.

On another Syrian border — with Lebanon — over which at least a million Syrians have fled as refugees since the start of their country's civil war, Lebanese authorities have instead opened the border crossing in anticipation of a reverse flow of refugees seeking to return home after years away.

Israeli airstrikes in recent weeks have damaged several of the border crossings between Lebanon and Syria, through which the Israeli military says the armed group Hezbollah has often sought to smuggle weapons that ultimately originate in Iran.

The Lebanese army — still working to redeploy troops to its southern border with Israel as part of a recent ceasefire agreement — has said it's also sending more units to its northern and eastern borders with Syria, in light of recent events.

Hadeel al-Shalchi, Emily Feng, Michele Kelemen and Aya Batrawy contributed to this report

[LadyTevar]

And Israel gets in on it.

Netanyahu Sends Troops to Golan Heights

[Rogue 9]

And Israel gets in on it.

Netanyahu Sends Troops to Golan Heights

Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967, and doesn't appear to be further moving on Syria. We'll see, but Israel has declared it intends to secure the Heights and not further interfere in Syria's internal affairs.

[Rogue 9]

Update to above-quoted story: Bashar al-Assad has been granted Russian asylum.

Assad is granted asylum in Russia as rebels seize control of the Syrian capital
Updated December 8, 20242:03 PM ET

By Willem Marx

...

The Russian state news agency, Tass, posted on social media that Assad had landed in Moscow with his family, and would be granted asylum by the Kremlin.

[wautd]

Mark Ames describes how monstrous these lunatics and their public relations agents like Bellingcat are.

Do you also have a real news source instead of a dubious website and an article written by a tankie pro Russian peace of shit?

[Elfdart]

Mark Ames describes how monstrous these lunatics and their public relations agents like Bellingcat are.

Do you also have a real news source instead of a dubious website and an article written by a tankie pro Russian peace of shit?

Feel free to point out anything false in that article.

[LadyTevar]

ISRAEL TO EXPAND SETTLEMENTS IN GOLAN HEIGHTS

Israel's government has approved a plan to encourage the expansion of settlements in the occupied Golan Heights.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the move was necessary because a "new front" had opened up on Israel's border with Syria after the fall of the Assad regime to an Islamist-led rebel alliance.

Netanyahu said he wanted to double the population of the Golan Heights, which Israel seized during the 1967 Six-Day War and is considered illegally occupied under international law.

Israeli forces moved into a buffer zone separating the Golan Heights from Syria in the days following Assad's departure, saying the change of control in Damascus meant ceasefire arrangements had "collapsed".

There are more than 30 Israeli settlements in the Golan Heights, which are home to an estimated 20,000 people. They are considered illegal under international law, which Israel disputes.

The settlers live alongside some 20,000 Syrians, most of them Druze Arabs who did not flee when the area came under Israeli control.

Netanyahu said Israel would "continue to hold on to [the territory], make it flourish and settle it".

The announcement comes a day after Syria's new de-facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa criticised Israel for its ongoing strikes on military targets in the country, which have reportedly targeted military facilities.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) has documented more than 450 Israeli air strikes in Syria since 8 December, including 75 since Saturday evening.

Al-Sharaa - also known as Abu Mohammed al-Jolani - said the strikes "crossed red lines" and risked escalating tensions in the region, though he said Syria was not seeking a conflict with any neighbouring state.

Speaking to Syria TV, which was seen as pro-opposition during the civil war, al-Sharaa said the country's "war-weary condition, after years of conflict and war, does not allow for new confrontations", Reuters reported.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has not commented on his remarks, but previously said the strikes were necessary to stop weapons falling "into the hands of extremists".

President Bashar al-Assad and his family fled to Russia and took up asylum when al-Sharaa's Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) led other rebel factions in a lightning offensive on Damascus.

The groups are continuing to form a transitional government in Syria, of which al-Sharaa is the theoretical head.

On Saturday, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had made direct contact with HTS, which the US and other Western governments still designates as a terrorist organisation.

United Nations' Syria envoy Geir Pedersen said on Sunday he hoped for a swift end to sanctions on the country to help facilitate an economic recovery.

"We will hopefully see a quick end to sanctions so that we can see really rallying around building up Syria," Pedersen said as he arrived in Damascus to meet Syria's caretaker government and other officials.

Elsewhere, Turkey's Defence Minister Yasar Guler said Ankara was ready to provide military support to Syria's new government.

"It is necessary to see what the new administration will do. We think it is necessary to give them a chance," Guler said of HTS, according to state news agency Anadolu and other Turkish media outlets.