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The Syrian Army liberated the city of Aleppo. First reports appeared on December 12, 2016. The Syrian Defense Ministry will likely announce this on December 13, 2016.
Hezbollah, Liwa al-Quds, the Desert Hawks Brigade, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba the SSNP’s military wing and other pro-government units had played an important role in assisting the Syrian army in this. Without their help the army wouldn’t be able to achieve this success. The Russian Special Forces on the ground in Aleppo were also important but classified part of the operation.
On December 12, the army and its allies made a series of successful advances inside Aleppo, retaking a few of militant-held neighborhoods. Last night, pro-government forces launched a final storm of remaining militant positions in the southeastern part of the city.
This was the blow that pushed Jaish al-Fatah and Fatah Halab militant coalitions to agree to withdraw from the remaining “opposition-held” areas. According to the agreement, all militants will be allowed to move from the eastern Aleppo pocket to the ‘Anadan plains near Mount Simeon or to surrender to government forces and to be pardoned (if they are not involved in crimes against the local population).
Despite the agreement put in place, some militant units are still remaining in the city. But they are not able to show a real resistance to the army. The battle for Aleppo turned into an operation to secure the city.
Fighting in Aleppo broke out on July 19, 2012 and lasted more than four years. Many experts say that the liberation of Aleppo is the biggest victory of the government in the Syrian war. Nonetheless, the war is far from the end.
The Russian Aerospace Forces have been striking ISIS terrorists along the Palmyra-Homs Highway with special attention to the areas near the Tyas Airbase and important hill tops captured by the terrorist group in the area.
The Syrian army and the National Defense Forces (NDF) withdrew from Palmyra’s outskirts to the Tyas Airbase in order to avoid flanking attacks by ISIS forward detachments. Now, the Tyas Airbase is a key defence locality of the Syrian army that it will use to repel ISIS attempts to develop the advance. In turn, the goal of Syrian government forces is to regroup, to deploy reinforcements and to prepare an operation to retake the ancient city from the terrorist group.
The ISIS attack on Palmyra widely covered in the mainstream media became a heavy PR blow to the Syrian and Russian governments. As result the strategic victory in Aleppo became hidden under the wave of negative reports about the setback in Palmyra. In this situation, the mainstream media and its sponsors will develop the issue of Palmyra in order to withdraw the attention from a devastating blow to al-Qaeda linked groups in Aleppo. It seems ISIS leadership and their partners planned and implemented an up-to-date and successful operation to not allow the Syrian government and its allies to gain the strategic initiative in media and diplomatic terms.
That’s true about being denied the strategic initiative but none of this would have happened had Palmyra been properly secured anyway; look at how it was when the SAA still had it; a thin salient with ISIS all around it, like the Tabaqa line. This was bound to happen again and will continue to unless the SAA takes the villages north of Tiyas/east of Salamiyah, which are ISIS’ bases for attacks. Doing this would reduce the frontline, so it would actually shore up troops too. As well basically end attacks on the region due to the lack of roads and villages available to ISIS, leaving them with only vast desert that would make their forces easy targets.
SAA attack south towards Uqayribat may be a great idea! Not a long drive for Aleppo forces. The lines have been static for a long time and ISUS may be weak there, having deployed forces to Palmyra and T4. Hoping that this is a last gasp ISUS offensive.
I think main topic to decide is where be the final ISIS battle. WIll it be Raqqa or Palmyra Region? ISIS has decide to take a stand in these areas. Another interesting rumours to be investigated are much of the ground resource is not from RAqqa or Mosul but turn coats from IDLIB unless there is a special agreement between ISIS and JN.
Was the attack on Palmyra made possible with ISIS reinforcements that were given a pass to retreat from Mosul? If so, they could have easily been taken out by air forces (US, Russian or Syrian) en route between Mosul and Palmyra.
Letting enemy troops retreat from Mosul and Aleppo is just kicking the can down the road for another day: if you don’t deal with them right away, they just regroup to attack you again in the future.
This is just a speculative thought on my part, but with the liberation of Aleppo and the departure of the moderates how long do you think it will be before the suicide bombers drive back into the market places?
The fall of Palmyra is a shameful defeat in Putin’s face. After all, the Russian military still has much to learn to compare theirselves with the United States.
The Russian military is doing a great job. BTW, the U.S. is still fighting in Afghanistan against guys with flip-flops and bedsheets. And the Sunni’s of Iraq managed to bog down 14 of the available 16 brigades until the U.S. military bought off the Sunni’s with airplanes full of money, dollars.
there still closing in on tyas airbase to me that’s much bigger failure then a surprise attack in a dense fog
What an conspiracy theory…. The so called main stream media talks about Aleppo all day long, i even got a push message about the city, i didnt get any about Palmyra.
In the news today they even showed another twitter message from another ‘7 year old kid’, again in good English. They should really make Assad minister of education and healthcare because he managed to get Syrian kids to be fluent in English at age 7, and the ratio of hospitals to inhabitants must have been higher then in the Western world.
Good video, but nobody that knows anything about Syria or cares, watches the mainstream media. They can print their fake reports, no one in listening anymore.
Don’t worry about the media, just get rid of all of the terrorists!
Its just a matter of days, if not hours before this ‘thrust’ by ISIS/DAESH is put down. Wrath from the air will be brought down on them, also artillery. It will go right into the ground. A blunder. This will in no way steal the success of Aleppo. As far as on the blog-o-sphere, this gives us fuel for the fire to bring down the lies and outright support of the MSM of the west to ISIS/DAESH into plain view for the world to see first hand.
A new survey showed the U.S. publics trust in their MSM to be at an all-time low. In the single digits.
All time low: true. Single digits: Maybe – depends on which question you consider. But for a good idea, even the most conservative pollsters (Gallup, for instance) shows only 32% do trust the media a good deal/fair amount from polls taken this summer. It has likely fallen lower than that since the election. Gallup asks for a reply to trust in the MSM as either 1) a good deal, 2) a fair amount, 3) not much or 4) not at all. #1 + #2 gave the 32% figure. Conversely, you can say that 68% don’t trust the media much or at all – a historic low.
The AP had a story last April about only 6% trusting the media, but this was only the percentage responding to option #1: those that have a good deal of trust in the MSM. Again, the number has probably fallen considerably since the elections.
More MSM death-porn graphs/discussion on MishTalk here. I believe that graph was only current on data through June. https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/dkvnto6zb0kw5c0shdj57q.png
I’ll take your word for it. But I do know this, the U.S. populace’s approval rating for Congress is in the single digits. The system is hemorrhaging everywhere. I hope my fellow Americans the best. As I feel they deserve nothing but the best. The U.S. needs to drop the uni-polar world bit and somehow find their place in a table, peaceful multi-polar one. Asap.
“the setback in Palmyra.” Relax, not for long! As 1691 said 2 days ago: “Not for long. Relax.”