A few videos have surfaced today which seem to show that Assad’s airforce is using white phosphorous munitions. These incendiary devices burn on contact with air and skin, causing severe burns and death. Their use is highly controversial.
Ma’arat Numan
Near Atareb/Base 46
Aleppo, Bustan Grove: material appears to spontaeneously relite
Nov 18/12
The FSA have taken Base 46 outside Atareb, which had been under siege for 2 months. Taking the base gives the FSA access to heavy weapons and badly needed ammunition. It also prevents it from being used as a base to shell Aleppo. The videos below show the final attacks, fighters celebrating, and checking over the weaponry they have captured.
Update via Shada tv: According to an activist interviewed on Shada, 70 regime soldiers were captured, and there were 10 defections. The regime sent reinforcements, up to 300 soldiers and a large number of vehicles from Kafar Naha which were engaged by the FSA.
Further update: Still some reports of fighting continuing, not clear whether inside or on outskirts of the base.
Nov 17/18: Final attacks
The command building
Some of the artillery pieces used to shell Aleppo
Captured soldiers
The defections
Celebrations
The spoils
Captured rocket launchers
28/08/12
15/08/2012 Washing away the blood in #Syria
With the acrid stench of disinfectant in the air, a woman, expressionless and intent on finishing this daily task as quickly as possible, sluices the last puddle of diluted blood off the hospital steps and onto the sidewalk.
For her this is routine. The pale faces of medical staff who for the past hour had been grimacing with intense concentration and inner frustration were close behind her.
“You cannot show our faces on television - you can’t reveal what we are doing here,” one doctor told me.
Two children under five years of age were dead and another - barely alive - had been sent to Turkey in a battered old car. Seven adults were seriously wounded. The hysteria of wailing relatives and children was now gone. The uncomfortable silence was deafening.
The stark reality echoing now in my mind as I write this a week later is that it was nothing unusual - it just happened to be caught on our camera.
Daily trauma
For months we have known about the medics wanting their work to be kept secret for fear they will be targeted in the same way that a rebel fighter could expect.
It had been one snapshot in the chain of daily trauma, the aftermath of what we all hear referred to as “indiscriminate shelling”. The shells from long-range artillery had landed on a village near al-Atarib this time.
A two-year-old boy was lying lifeless on one of two beds in the tiny, ill-equipped emergency room.
The doctors had moved on to another patient after at least ten minutes of CPR, the hand pumped respirator now at work elsewhere.
The toddler’s mother was being restrained in the other bed as a nurse applied bandages to her face. On the floor were injured men and women being checked over in some sort of triage process. And outside this claustrophobic mayhem on the reception room floor, another young child took his final breath.
I have no doubt that no one crammed into those 60 minutes of excruciating attempts to save lives could be described as a revolutionary. They were all civilians. And nobody wanted to talk about freedom or human rights.
There was just a question barked in my direction: “Where is the help that the outside world keeps promising?” Or words to that effect.
‘Guns, not medicine’
Earlier that day, the same question was put to me by a brigadier-general who defected five months ago from his post as head of intelligence for a region that included Aleppo city.
But the question was aimed in a different direction. He wanted more guns, bigger ones. And much more ammunition.
No mention of humanitarian assistance.
Was he a true revolutionary? Well, he says he is now. But a year ago, he was actively at work trying to crush the uprising.
Where do the civilians stand in all of this?
Certainly the majority of the masses who have fled Aleppo and many of those who remain there would not candidly have numbered themselves as actively supporting the uprising months ago.
Top of wish list
Guns, heavier weaponry, bullets, shells and rockets are at the top of the wish list for those fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. Second comes medical personnel, field hospitals, medicine and equipment.
Some of the latter we know have been getting into Syria, mostly through the smuggling routes on Syria’s borders.
Primarily, those routes run through Turkey. It’s a trickle of support, not a surge, though.
My line of thought fast forwards to Istanbul, and coverage of Hillary Clinton’s Saturday visit that packed in separate talks with the Turkish foreign minister, the prime minister, the president, a selection of refugees, activists, prominent opposition members in exile and the Syrian National Council.
One headline to emerge from those meetings was that Turkey and the US had “agreed to accelerate preparations for the fall of the Syrian president”.
Meaning?
The setting up of a bilateral team to help the opposition while trying to work out which part of a splintered political spread of people could be onside. Or, better still, have some semblance of unity.
Also, providing aid to fleeing refugees and planning contingencies for worst-case scenarios that include a chemical weapons attack.
No-fly zone
Questions put at the obligatory joint news conference raised the idea of a no-fly zone - not for the first time.
It wasn’t ruled out by Clinton, who more than made up for any perceived differences with her NATO ally by repeated gushing thanks for Turkey’s costly operation to provide an undeclared safe haven for more than 55,000 registered refugees and the Free Syrian Army.
Plus an assurance that the US would stand by Turkey in its fight with the PKK, the Kurdish Workers’ Party, to ensure it would get no foothold in Northern Syria.
And there was, of course, the announcement of another $5.5 million in humanitarian aid.
Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, also said a no-fly zone was still on the table, despite the knowledge that Russia and China would be likely to veto any such move.
Clinton said it was going to require more in-depth analysis by the joint working group. It being an election year in the United States, it is unlikely that any unilateral action will be taken. ”Contingency”, “operational planning” and “co-ordination” were the buzz words on Sunday.
Before leaving Istanbul to the surreal feeling of London in Olympic euphoria, my mind went back to the hospital. Political reality is hard to describe to those bereaved or maimed by a war for which initially they had no vested interest.
Daily trauma
I called it a snapshot in a chain of daily trauma. It’s probably more aptly described as a perpetual horror story that, for now, has no end. And it’s playing out every day all over Syria, much of it unseen by media.
The images of the doctors’ pale faces and the children who died take an indelible place in a collage of memory from war zones I have worked in over the past three decades.
Usually, that recurring universal question, where is the help from outside, is eventually answered by meaningful humanitarian aid, with or without military intervention.
For Syria, it’s much more complicated.
And I’m pretty sure that when I return there again soon, I will still stumble to placate or calm the next questioner even more than the last time.
The UN is unable to make a move as long as Russian and Chinese objections continue to exist, and the states that want Assad out of power are engaged in talk of an endgame that doesn’t appear to have been worked out.
And the cleaner in the hospital will still be going through her daily routine of washing away the bloodshed.
Follow Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmon’s on Twitter @SimmJazeera.
27/07/2012
(Reuters) - Since he joined a poorly armed, ragtag rebel group, Syrian fighter Radwan al-Saaour has been mostly on the run, hiding in the woods of Idlib province near Turkey as loyalist forces overran town after town killing people at will.
But his fortunes, and those of the armed resistance movement against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, have changed dramatically in the last few weeks. Last month, Saaour celebrated repelling an army attack on the town of Kafr Karmin by setting a Russian-made army tank on fire.
“We took their anti-aircraft guns, the booty and left a dozen of their men dead,” said Saaour, 26, a former labourer who once earned a living in the port of Latakia.
Sixteen months after the uprising against Assad began, the battle between lightly armed rebels and the awesome firepower of the Syrian military - one of the largest standing armies in the Middle East - has become a war of attrition as defections weaken Assad’s forces and the rebels’ combat skills improve.
Saaour’s successes have been matched by broader rebel gains across the country in the last two weeks, as fighters seized several border posts and took the fight against Assad to the capital, Damascus, and to Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city.
It hasn’t all gone the rebels’ way though - government troops have since regained control over most of Damascus and were poised on Friday to launch a counter-attack in Aleppo after bringing in reinforcements from nearby provinces.
But while intense army shelling in the last few weeks has forced hundreds of Saaour’s comrades to retreat from towns within Idlib province and rural areas north of Aleppo, most of the countryside in northwest Syria is now outside the control of the overstretched military.
“We are now in control of most of the countryside around Idlib and the countryside north of Aleppo,” Saaour, one of hundreds of fighters who go back and forth across the border, told Reuters in a flat in the Turkish border city of Reyhanli.
Almost 70 percent of the large countryside towns in northwestern Syria that border Turkey - towns such as Maarat al-Nuaman, Sarmada, Maarat Nisreen, Kafar Takharim, Teftanaz and Binish - are in rebel hands, several Free Army commanders say.
In northern and western rural areas near Aleppo, the country’s largest city and commercial hub, the larger towns of Atareb, Darat Azeh, Anadan, Tel Rifat and scores of smaller villages have also fallen under rebel control.
That has left only the southern and eastern rural outskirts of the city of Aleppo still under the control of Assad’s forces.
“If it had not been for the shelling he would have no control at all over the countryside. The more losses on the ground, the more defections that weaken the army,” said Abu Omar, a young fighter from Idlib.
ARMY ON BACKFOOT
Only Harem, a pro-Assad Sunni Muslim border town, and the Shi’ite Muslim villages of Foua and Kfrya, 25 km (15 miles) from the border with Turkey, as well as parts of Jisr Shughur, now remain as isolated pro-army territory in the predominantly Sunni-populated Idlib province that borders Turkey, rebels say.
Subjected to more frequent attacks and roadside bombs, Assad’s battalions in the northwest have been increasingly confined to several large bases, including the main Mastuma army base, 4 km (2 miles) south of Idlib city.
The headquarters of the feared 46th battalion of the Republican Guard south of the restive town of Atareb, 15 km (10 miles) west of the Turkish border post of Reyhanli, has been the source of some of the heaviest artillery barrages, rebels say.
In the last two months, the army has even deserted checkpoints that used to seal off one county town from another after suffering losses from ambushes and landmines targeting army convoys on supply routes to Aleppo, Idlib and Homs.
One sophisticated operation last month saw the rebels briefly capture the strategic air base of Ghanto near the restive town of Rastan where they destroyed surface-to-air missiles.
Around the same time, a daring raid on the Jebel Sheikh Barakat mountain, almost 20 km (12 miles) northeast of Aleppo, saw rebels overrun a radar station, loot its contents, and kill its defenders. Last week, rebels also overran the main Bab al-Hawa crossing with Turkey, and two other border posts.
“The state’s authority has almost disappeared on the main international highway, all the way from Turkey to Homs,” said one Syrian business traveller who entered the crossing from Aleppo and gave his name as Barakat.
In the town of Anadan, 20 km (12 miles) north of Aleppo, fighters say they return at night to engage the army in hit-and-run attacks on checkpoints and nearby security compounds, even after the army forced them to retreat to nearby mountains.
“They don’t have control during the night and even during the day they cannot stay too long,” said Ibrahim Maatouk, 35, a local rebel commander, brought by rebels to a Turkish ambulance at the border and rushed to surgery for bullet wounds in the chest and left leg.
“They are shelling rebel-held countryside towns randomly as far as 30 km (20 miles) away from their bases. Their aim is to terrify locals and make people hate us and turn them against us but the effect is the opposite. The more they bombard us the more people get closer together and hate them,” he added.
BOLDER ATTACKS
Young fighters, many suffering shrapnel wounds and broken limbs, say months of gun battles have honed their combat skills.
“We did not have experience to lay explosives, or any coherent leadership … but this is now changing,” said Khaldoun al-Omar who arrived from Sarmada, 5 km (3 miles) from the Turkish border.
“The battles are looking more like warfare between two armies, even though they far outgun us,” he added.
Higher ranking officers who joined the rebels in June with rocket-propelled launchers looted from army depots in the village of Khan Sobol and Jabal al-Zawya helped bring much needed expertise to the poorly equipped force.
“Two months ago we would not be able to confront a tank. Now, we are able to and the captured ones have been hidden in the mountains for when the time comes to use them,” said Omar, who underwent six hours of surgery in Turkey for a leg wound.
Omar said hundreds of youths, many of whom already had military training as conscripts, were now getting more rigorous training in woodland areas along the long porous border in makeshift camps.
Young rebels were now also using more sophisticated improvised explosive devices against armoured vehicles that the Syrian army has used in battle against them.
Syrian official media have shown munitions they say have been confiscated from “armed terrorists”, in displays which officials say are further proof that foreign financed weapons are getting into the hands of rebels.
Although they are becoming bolder and more effective across large swathes of the countryside, fighters say a lack of anti-tank weapons, bullets and rocket-propelled grenades puts them at a disadvantage when attacking heavily fortified army bases.
Several months ago, rebels retreated from the city of Idlib, where attacks against the army by youths shouldering AK-47 rifles did little damage and resulted in massive tank and artillery retaliation, rebels say.
“We ran out of ammunition and we had to pull back, even though we could have held them back for weeks if we had had more,” said Abdul Rahman al-Sheikh, a brigade commander now operating in the plantations near Taftanaz, a restive town in Idlib province.
The army’s use of sophisticated transceivers in helicopters to track rebel communications has also helped pinpoint many rebel hideouts for aerial bombardment, said Anas Haj Hassan, a rebel fighter.
“They are getting the location from mobiles and walkie talkies we use to communicate to hit the building we are taking cover in,” said Hassan, who only survived an attack that killed five of his group by leaving the location half an hour before.
A young wounded fighter, who goes by the name of Abu Abdullah, 27, who had just arrived from the town of Saraqib, said lack of sufficient anti-tank weapons and RPGs was hindering further gains.
“Our weapons are still weak, we need much more, at least RPGs and anti-tank missiles that we are now mostly using. The Russian AK-47 no longer has a role in the fiercest battles we are now waging against Assad’s forces,” said Abu Abdullah, lying in a Turkish hospital bed a few kilometres away from the battleground inside Syria.
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