The situation remains tense in southwestern Aleppo. The Jaish al-Fatah operation room holds positions in the corridor to the militant-controlled areas in eastern Aleppo with strong points in the 1070 Apartment Project, the Ramouseh Artillery Base, the norther part of Ramouseh Neighborhood and the roundabout near the Al-Ameria area.
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Since today morning, militant units have been advancing on the Syrian army positions at the 3000 Apartment Project and al-Hamdaniyah. Clashes are also ongoing in the norther part of Ramouseh Neighborhood and at the Cement Plant.
The both sides have difficulties with providing supplies to the besieged areas. The Jaish al-Fatah operation room were able to deliver few aid trucks to the Alramousa Neighborhood while the Syrian government delivered some supplies to western Aleppo through the Castello Highway. However, such dlivers are complicated due to the tense situation at the frontlines.
Pro-militant sources report that the joint jihadi forces were able to destroy 2 battle tanks, 2 vehicles with machine guns and over 40 Syrian army troops and Hezbollah fighters yesterday. In turn, pro-government sources say that over 60 jihadists were killed.
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Now, the jihadists are attempting to push the pro-government forces from the Cement Plant in the Ramouseh Neighborhood and from the 3000 Apartment Project. It would allow them to set more or less safe way to supply the areas in eastern Aleppo through the opened corridor.
Syrian warplanes are carrying out air strikes on jihadi targets in southwest Aleppo:
Video footage shows #SyrianArmy jet carries out air strikes on south west #Aleppo #Syria pic.twitter.com/zBCzTNRueq
— maytham (@maytham956) August 8, 2016
Various unconfirmed reports say that the Syrian government is redeploying up to 6000 fighters as reinforcements to the Syrian army in Aleppo city. This force should allow the pro-government forces to succesfully prevent all jihadi attempts to widen the corridor to eastern Aleppo.
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If the SAA has 6,000 men in reserve then I am the Queen of England. – Pro-Assad people keep talking about “strategic withdrawals” and “drawing terrorists into the open”…then why did Assad just replace the commanding officer on this front? – SAA got its ass kicked and South Front is trying to cover it up. Losing credibility in my eyes :( – I hate ISIL and whatever AlQaeda is calling itself this week, but this lousy reporting has to stop!
– I don’t expect accurate casualty counts but you could at least give us proper maps instead of scouring jihadist social media for the one that has the most red on it.
Are you able to provide an example where SF “covers up” the loses of the Syrian government?
I don’t believe that the SAA has 6000 men in reserve by any means, however prior to the string of successes in Damascus recently the SAA numbers around East Ghouta were estimated at 50k so reassigning 6k is plausible.
Also, while SF does remain more objective than most media, I believe they are based in Russia which lends them an amount of bias which has to be accounted for when reading these things.
Just to be precise – they never said anything about ‘6000 men in reserve’ (George Washington is hallucinating here), they said “Various unconfirmed reports say that the Syrian government is redeploying up to 6000 fighters as reinforcements to the Syrian army in Aleppo city.” Redeploying from Aleppo and other fronts. That’s very likely actually, they urgently need reinforcements.
Did you not notice how many failed attacks they made before managing to open a corridor? And previously the failed attempts at Castello road? The jihadis suffered big losses and they didn’t manage to open a major roadway, just some unfinished apartments and abandoned factories etc.
This war has been going on for years and will continue for years probably.
Also, the SAA also get reinforcements from their allies hezbollah/iran. And they do have reserves, for example in Damascus for the protection of the core of the regime. As they clean up Darayya and take over eastern ghouta, forces from there will become available eventually. As they consolidate their territories and ISIS has other things to worry about.
Taking Eastern Ghouta, Douma and the like will take years. The maps for Darayya show the rebels with far more territory than they had just a few weeks ago.
I would debate that, if the SAA can maintain pressure on the front lines, even if they crawl across the territory I can’t imagine it taking more than a year of constant progress and with the balance of power in the SAA’s favour already, things can only go one way there.
The issue is that the SAA aren’t good at applying pressure, they seem to favour the all or nothing approach and stopping once they’ve taken the primary target. Whereas the militants seem to be good at building pressure on the SAA lines and then overwhelming them with huge numbers of fresh troops, a tactic which allows them to chase the SAA back to their next solid lines and gain large swathes of land.
If they could maintain pressure, they could take the country back within a year, but like you say, they prefer stalemates, stagnation. Look at how long Darayya has taken, and they’ve only got, what, half of it? Look at how much Douma alone is bigger, let alone the bunch of other towns to the south of it.
Taking an area like Ghouta in a year and taking the whole country in a year are on slightly different levels but I do take your point. Even with constant forward motion I can’t see the country being taken in less than two or three years.
When I decided on the one year estimate for East Ghouta I accounted several months for Douma alone and that’s if they can maintain the constant crawl along the streets. As far as Darayya goes, I’m not sure why it’s taking quite so long given how much each offensive gains, the only explanation I can see is that the government are trying very hard to get a diplomatic solution.
Like in Iraq (except less so), they outnumber their enemy; in East Ghouta, there’s got to be only a few thousand militants at most, that’s nothing, they should be able to swarm through there. You don’t know why it’s taking so long in Darayya but you don’t expect the same to happen in the mass of settlements a little way away? Why?
I suppose part of it is that they don’t want to get caught up in urban combat, something they don’t have to worry about so much in the smaller settlements of East Ghouta. Then again, the fact that the SAA are happy to push through smaller settlements in one go but take their time over places such as Darayya is part of the reason behind my confusion in this matter.
I am yet to see the significant gains made by the terrorists in their offenses in southern Aleppo and the evidence that they are able to consolidate and expand on these gains whatever they are. A small breach of the seige that they unable to expand and the taking of some military colleges with a fragile presence in the Ramouseh neighborhood does not in my mind count as being significant. One of the concepts of a strategic withdrawal has always been to give the enemy a little territory in order to draw him into a senario that give gives the opposing force a greater advantage over him. In my mind this is exactly what the SAA has done. Commanding officers are relieved for varying reasons, and not only because of incompetence. It may very well be that this phase of the fighting requires a commander who has a certain subset of military skills and a mindset required for this phrase of the battle.I have always held that the battle for Aleppo from the perspective of the SAA and their Allies has to be a battle of attrition.We has seen reports of the terrorists experiencing losses of 2000 plus men over the last 12 days.The figure may be somewhat inflated, but its in keeping with the reality of the all out attacks waged by the terrorists and the heavy bombardment inflicted by the Russian Areospace Force and the SyAA Force on their exposed forces. This current phase of the fighting in Aleppo I think will be a decisive one as the SAA and their Allies seek to break the backbone of the terrorists and to siginificantly break their capacity and capabilities to wage war. The coming weeks will certainly decide the fate of Aleppo in my estimation.
The coming weeks will indeed decide the fate of Aleppo and having seen SAA tactics elsewhere, I fear it will decide the war.
From my point of view the Tiger force’s advance on the Castello road was premature, the militant counter in the south was inevitable once they realised reopening the northern route was impossible and the SAA didn’t prepare themselves for it, despite the advance warning by the Jihadists and the fact they put their plan on the internet, the SAA response was woeful at best.
I’m concerned that the SAA will over-commit to the battle for the city and lose, I’d prefer to see them evacuate and withdraw for now before conducting offensives to the north and south and win the battle for Aleppo in the surrounding countryside. I think analysts and SAA strategists alike forget that you don’t have to be in a city to control it.
Still, all we can do now is wait and see how it plays out, I hope it goes better than it looks.
I hear you but I am not to concerned about the abilities of the SAA at this time. Let us not fool ourselves, the terrorists command center is being directed by US Intelligence and they do have the benefit of US satellite data. My own view is that the SAA and their Allies have been cautious because they are unsure of the real strategic objectives of the terrorists and they may believe that all the preceeding offensives were diversionary in nature. We have no real evidence as yet of a main terrorist offensive. I suspect that the SAA and their Allies will not mount a decisive counter offensive until they are clear about the strategic offensive of the terrorists. In the mean time I am satisfied if they utilize the diversionary tactics of the terrorists as a means to decimate as many of them as possible in Southern Aleppo with air and artillery strikes, whilst they obliterate reinforcement and supply convoys across Aleppo. The coming weeks will reveal the terrorists true strategic objectives, and as we agree the SAA response will decide the future of Aleppo.
The US satellite data is irrelevant.All SyAF and RuAF had to do is have a drone or two keep an eye on rebel positions while they were consolidating before the attack and carpet bomb and cluster bomb and barrel bomb them during the night and get rid of 12k fighters before they even reached Aleppo.Its mind blowing how stupid military advisers (russian and syrian) can be.
The Iraqi air force took out and entire ISIS convoy north of Fallujah,yet these people knew in advance what was going to happen and didn’t do jack shit.The RuAF was bombing in Idlib during the assault, while SAA was losing position after position.Da fuq????
Learn to read : “the Syrian government is redeploying up to 6000 fighters” – REDEPLOYING, do I have to explain what redeloying means? You are misquoting and lying here, not SF. It’s perfectly reasonable that they are redeploying different units, even from different regions to reinforce their position in Aleppo. I would be surprised if they don’t.
btw This is a perfectly balanced article, quoting different sources (including jihadists) there is absoulutely no objectivity problem this report, or any other problem. Go watch CNN if you don’t like it.
Question: When do those pro-Hezbollah Iraqi militias arrive? Are they decently trained and equiped? It said in an earlier article on SF that it would be around 2.000 troops. I guess they are not very well equiped. (I’m thinking they wield AK-47’s and not even AK-74’s). They might have some RPG’s and lighter machine guns. None-the-less, 2.000 is a very welcome reinforcement for SAA and allies in the battle for Aleppo. Hopefully, they are at least disciplined and cohesive. When would they arrive? Have they left Iraq already? Are they going to be sent right to Aleppo city or would they start attacking jihadis somewhere in the province and then try to make their way to Aleppo city? … Is RU going to send some special ops. (spetznatz) or parachuted marines troops to Aleppo city? They would definitely be useful; even for coordinating air strikes. … Would the Kurds (SDF) give some help by attacking these jihadi groups (other than ISIS) from the North, North-East ?
I believe Southfront gives the best available information. There is no conspiracy or secret here, it is clear that Southfront is reliant on a range of sources. It does not have its own reporters on the ground so the information is of course secondary. Reports from many sources are posted. I expect Southfront understands that this is not absolutely reliable but is the best that can be done in the circumstances. I am not sure what people expect. Southfront is just a blog which tries to give the best information available and also gives very good analysis when it can. I would go further and say it is by far the best such source.
Completely agree.
It certainly is a resource battle. It remains to be be seen which part wears theirs down more quickly. The attacker has to have the upper hand in the offensive (military manuals cite a 3:1 ratio), but will also have a higher rate of attrition. Another disadvantage are the supply lines, which will be fair game for the air force. It doesn’t help at all to hold on an untenable position, the wise decision is to retreat to a new defensible one. Also, the previous positions will be the target of heavy artillery, and bombing without any restraints. Leaving some “surprises” also helps. As the situation is evolving rapidly, it’s very difficult to make correct predictions. A correct analysis is much easier in retrospect.
The small loss in aleppo may be resulting in big gains in Latakia . By engaging these terrorist scums in Aleppo will give considerable advantage to SAA to move forward towards Jisr al shigour and eventually Idlib.