ISIS units in the area of Uqayrabat in the province of Homs is almost fully encircled by the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and its allies. Earlier this week, government forces made a series of advances cutting off the only ISIS supply line to Uqayrabat and deploying close the narrow corridor between Uqayrabat and the rest of the ISIS-held area in the province of Homs.
According to some pro-government sources, ISIS is now fully encircled in Uqayrabat. However, this still has to be confirmed.
SAA should close both of the packets. The other packet is from Al Kawm to Al Sukhnah. Two small packets would be easy for SAA to close and eliminate ISIS one by one or two the same time if SAA has enough units to do it.
I feel bad for the ISIS strategist, they should have withdrawn from these pockets by now, trying to hold on while potentially harmful to the SAA is going to be worse for ISIS in the long run as their other defences collapse faster due to lack of manpower.
You are right, although Isis has already withdrawn from the pocket, not entirely but still the majority of fighters withdrew to southern raqqa. The reason why Isis isn´t withdrawing fully is because they want to slow down the SAA advances while at the same time, launching counter offensives to disrupt it. They also know that the SAA has withdrawn from several positions in order to support these offensives with manpowers so ISIS are trying to take advantage of that and launch surprise counter attacks.
This is true but for that sort of thing they’d be better to dissolve their conventional formations in ths area and operate in cells to cause general problems for the SAA, force them to hold troops in garrisons rather than on the front lines.
Why, actually? According to the IS (Islamic) beliefs, every dead IS soldiers get 72 willing virgins and an endless supply of wine. Good soldiers willingly help them test that hypothesis…
I thought that one had to achieve a good death, rather than being thrown away by a careless strategist. Besides, careless strategists aren’t popular with commanders who actually care about their troops.
I know enough of Islamic scripture and history to be pretty certain that no such distinction exists. The official life stories of Mohammad himself has several cases of throwaway deaths “for the cause of Allah”. Any suggestion of a distinction should be supported by relevant sources. Then, the natural survival instinct contradicts Islamic ideology. Here, as in many other situations.
The ISIS planners are in Langley and treat their head-chopping, heart-eating rapers as the cannon-fodder they are.
The ISIS strategist lives in Tel Aviv, I doubt he’s too worried.
According to syria.liveuamap the pocket is closed and SAA troops from both pincers have met.
Also according to http://syriancivilwarmap.com ( I prefer this live map because it is not run by Soros-paid Ukro-neonazis)
Well you cannot watch that page with addblocker on.. that just racist.
That’s more accurate than other maps, but it’s slow at updating.
They appear to be making 2 pockets… Then they will most likely clear the central one. And then ISIS is fucked!
A double envelopment is a classic move. The inner cuts off the forces, the outer prevents escape and relief efforts. It also complicates the defenders ability to prevent the move. The Russians did this at Stalingrad.
Busy and brave SAA men, solidary allies. It works well. But the have to put more than one eye on DE and DE city. The yanks mobilize their slaves there to get Deir Ezzor’ s rich areas.
Nice, shorten those front lines and attack DeZ with one long massive front that ISIS has no chance of defending against! Also, swallow up the Jordanian border rebels!