Iraq & Syrian Civil Wars - Page 177

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Lloyd and Postol then noted the serious policy implications of their findings: “This mistaken intelligence could have led to an unjustified US military action based on false intelligence. … Whatever the reasons for the egregious errors in the intelligence, the source of these errors needs to be explained. If the source of these errors is not identified, the procedures that led to this intelligence failure will go uncorrected, and the chances of a future policy disaster will grow with certainty.”

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Turkey threatened on Friday to retaliate for any attack on the tomb of Suleyman Shah, grandfather of the founder of the Ottoman Empire, in an area of northern Syria largely controlled by militant Islamists.

Ankara regards the tomb of Suleyman Shah as sovereign Turkish territory under a treaty signed with France in 1921, when Syria was under French rule. About two dozen Turkish special forces soldiers permanently guard the tomb.

The Turkish warning follows clashes this week between militants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an al Qaeda breakaway group, and rival rebel groups in the area of the tomb, which lies east of Aleppo near the Turkish border.

ISIL and other militants, whose strict Salafi interpretation of Islam deems the veneration of tombs to be idolatrous, have destroyed several tombs and mosques in rebel-held areas.

"Any kind of attack ... will bring retaliation. In defending its sovereign territory, Turkey will take all measures necessary without any hesitation," Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told a televised news conference.

"At the current time there is no question of any intrusion targeting our territory and our soldiers, but we stand ready to take whatever steps are needed in the event of a threat. The Turkish public need have no doubts in this regard," he said.

Davutoglu, who was speaking in the eastern Turkish city of Van after talks with the foreign ministers of Iran and Azerbaijan, did not say what measures Turkey might take, but Vatan newspaper said it could send more troops to the site.

Suleyman Shah was the grandfather of Osman I, founder of the Ottoman dynasty which for centuries ruled Anatolia, much of the Middle East and southeastern Europe and a swathe of north Africa from its capital in Constantinople, modern-day Istanbul.

Syrian rebels have seized a Syrian military intelligence compound in the southern Hauran Plain near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, rebel commanders said.

The frontier, quiet since Israel and Syria agreed on a US-brokered ceasefire in 1974, has turned volatile in recent weeks, after opposition brigades stepped up attacks against army and intelligence compounds dotting the agricultural plain stretching from the border with Jordan to the Damascus outskirts.

The compound near the Yarmouk River in the town of Shagara, eight kilometres from a ceasefire line with Israel, fell after a five-day siege, the sources said on Sunday.

ISIS gave Turkey 3 days from 16/3/14 to lower it's flag and withdraw it's troops from the tomb of Suleyman Shah, because they don't want any 'secular' army on it's lands, and ISIS will flatten the tomb to the ground.

ISTANBUL, March 23 (Reuters) - Turkey's armed forces shot down a Syrian plane on Sunday after it crossed into Turkish air space in a border region where Syrian rebels have been battling President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

"A Syrian plane violated our airspace," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told an election rally of his supporters in northwest Turkey.

"Our F-16s took off and hit this plane. Why? Because if you violate my airspace, our slap after this will be hard,"

The rebels have been fighting for control of the Kasab crossing, the border region, since Friday, when they launched an offensive which Syrian authorities say was backed by Turkey's military.

On March 22 2014 03:46 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
So expect Turkey to move in troops now if this happens:



https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=755813164442511

https://twitter.com/ShamiWitness/status/446934019494539264


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js6XhiXJng0

Two cousins of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were killed in a town near Turkey, sources told Al Arabiya News Channel on Monday.

The killing of Ali and Kifah al-Assad pushed the death toll for the cousins of the Syrian leader to three, after Sunday’s killing of Hilal al-Assad.

State news agency SANA reported that Hilal, the head of Syria’s National Defense paramilitary forces for the northwestern regime stronghold province of Latakia, was killed in fierce fighting in Latakia’s border town of Kasab.

The National Defense Force is a militia set up to support the army in its three-year battle with rebels seeking to overthrow Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights was quoted by Reuters as saying that Hilal was killed along with seven of his fighters in clashes with al-Nusra Front and other Islamist miltant groups.

After exposing videos of “ritual human sacrifices” of Christians by Muslims, a former Palestinian Liberation Organization member-turned-Christian has discovered a new set of shocking videos that show human slaughterhouses in which non-Muslims are executed.

The videos, posted by Walid Shoebat, and his son, Theodore Shoebat, are horrific, showing heads neatly lined up against a wall and bodies suspended by their feet in a room.

Also shown is the testimony of a witness who was threatened with being “sacrificed.”

“I have never seen something like this,” Shoebat told WND. “I have been investigating this story for the past two weeks. The story is probably the most horrific I have ever [done]. It proves with footage actual systematic [sl]aughterhouses of human beings, including Christians in Syria.”

BEIRUT — Hard-line Islamic rebels captured a small town in northwestern Syria near the Turkish border as part of their offensive in the rugged coastal region that is a bastion of support for President Bashar Assad, activists said Monday.

Fighters from an array of armed opposition groups seized the predominantly Armenian Christian town of Kassab on Sunday. The rebels, including militants from the Al Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, have also wrested control of a nearby border crossing to Turkey.


The advances, while minor in terms of territory, provided a boost to a beleaguered rebellion that has suffered a string of battlefield losses in recent weeks. Forces loyal to Assad have captured several towns near Syria’s border with Lebanon as part of a government drive to sever rebel supply lines across the porous frontier.

In yet another round of fierce fighting, militants from the Kurdish YPG opposition group are reported to have killed at least nine fighters belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in the town of Kobani.