Iraq & Syrian Civil Wars - Page 266

Mount Sinjar: Islamic State siege broken, say Kurds

On the ground, about 8,000 Kurdish peshmerga fighters launched a two-pronged attack which they said had succeeded in opening a wide corridor to allow members of the Yazidi minority and others to leave.

On December 19 2014 16:22 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
Only occurrence that has happened was earlier this week when IS tried to overrun a base occupied by US personnel. IS was repulsed.

Combat footage of Peshmerga near Nehrewan.

FSA fighters fire multiple 'Hell Cannons' towards regime positions.

DAMASCUS, Syria — Less than 24 hours after the announcement of the "liberation battle," the northern front in Syria witnessed accelerated developments as Jabhat al-Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa, with the participation of Ahrar al-Sham, seized the al-Hamidiyya and Wadi al-Daif camps on Dec. 15. These belonged to the Syrian army and are located in the southern countryside of Idlib. This significant development comes after two years of repeated attacks on the two camps that have been besieged by opposition fighters for 11 months.

Wadi al-Daif camp is located east of the town of Maarrat al-Numan, which was seized by rebels on Oct. 9, 2012. Al-Hamidiyya camp, which is adjacent to al-Hamidiyya village, is located south of the city of Maarrat al-Numan on the Damascus-Aleppo road. The two camps cover 13 kilometers (8 miles) in length and 3 kilometers (2 miles) in width.

Before the Syrian civil war, these two camps were the largest fuel reservoir for the Syrian army. But as the conflict erupted, the two camps turned into a gathering point for the Syrian armed forces, which used them as a base to launch shells and missiles toward the villages of Idlib’s countryside.

The two camps contain 40 military points, about 1,500 officers and elements of the Syrian army and 50 military vehicles, some of which were destroyed at an earlier stage by attacks on the two camps over the past two years. Helicopters were the only means to deliver supplies to the two besieged camps.

Abu Fadl, a Ahrar al-Sham member who participated in the battle, told Al-Monitor: "We started the operation with Jabhat al-Nusra with introductory artillery that lasted for three consecutive days. Jabhat al-Nusra used TAO missiles in the battle, which it looted from the Syria Revolutionaries Front after it expelled them and seized their warehouses last month."

Kurdish forces entering and attacking ISIS in Sinjar.

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—Kurdish Peshmerga forces have killed dozens of Islamic State (ISIS) foreign fighters in three days of battle near the Syrian border, a frontline commander said.

Captain Ali, a Peshmerga commander near the town of Sinune said that his forces have killed more than 75 foreign fighters, among them Germans, Tunisians, Nigerians, Russians, Africans and Europeans.

“We have taken photos of their passports and IDs and their bodies still lie there,” Cpt. Ali told Rudaw.

He said that the ISIS militants are in disarray and they have fled in every direction, some of them to Mosul and others to Syria.

“Most of the militants around here are foreign nationals,” he said.

IS has executed 100 foreigners trying to quit: report

The Islamic State extremist group has executed 100 of its own foreign fighters who tried to flee their headquarters in the Syrian city of Raqqa, the Financial Times newspaper said Saturday.

An activist opposed to both IS and the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who is well-known to the British business broadsheet, said he had "verified 100 executions" of foreign IS fighters trying to leave the jihadist group's de facto capital. IS fighters in Raqqa said the group has created a military police to clamp down on foreign fighters who do not report for duty. Dozens of homes have been raided and many jihadists have been arrested, the FT reported. Some jihadists have become disillusioned with the realities of fighting in Syria, reports have said.

According to the British press in October, five Britons, three French, two Germans and two Belgians wanted to return home after complaining that they ended up fighting against other rebel groups rather than Assad's regime. They were being held prisoner by IS.

In total, between 30 and 50 Britons want to return but fear they face jail, according to researchers at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London, which had been contacted by one of the jihadists speaking on their behalf.

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Source

On December 21 2014 17:53 sgtnoobkilla wrote:
Darwin strikes again:

https://twitter.com/STForeignDesk/status/546304316277927937
Blindly signing up as cannon fodder and getting cold feet halfway through eh?

IS Firing Heavy Artillery Directly into Deir al Zor Airport.

On December 21 2014 20:58 KwarK wrote:
I don't know, I have a degree of empathy for them. Put yourself in the shoes of a second gen immigrant growing up in the one of the poorest parts of the UK, for example, unable to really buy into the British national identity cause you live in a tiny flat in a high crime shithole filled with people like you who have been priced out of the good areas with the good schools, no guarantee of employment, completely let down by capitalism, denied the means to access the goods that advertisers constantly barrage you with messages you deserve, no hope, no future. If some radical imam comes to you and says that the reason your life is shitty, the reason you feel alienated from your host nation, the reason all the meaning that the environment says you should find seems to glide off of you, is because you're living a sinful life in defiance of Allah then you might be young and dumb enough to believe that, especially if you were already religious. I mean what the fuck else do you have going on. Life left you with a giant vacuum and, if you're young, naive and not too bright, an authority figure could fill that will all kinds of shit.

I grew up British in Britain, the system was built for me. Rich parents, good school, university, didn't especially care for football but whatever, I still could have gone without worrying about racism etc. Looking down on the people who had a totally different experience of the system and being smug about making better choices is a worthless, masturbatory exercise. Yes, joining ISIS is pretty fucking dumb but going "lol, fuck those idiots, I hope they all die" is a very simplistic and pointless analysis which ignores the very real reasons why normal kids end up lost in a foreign country being executed by ISIS.

On December 22 2014 00:37 KwarK wrote:
Way to miss the point about dumb, overly simplistic explanations that don't go anywhere and instead just blaming monsters. Unfortunately monsters aren't real, ISIS are no less human than you are and are a problem which won't change until the human causes of ISIS are dealt with.

SHINGAl, Kurdistan Region - The Islamic State (ISIS) has executed more than 50 of its own militants as a warning to others about abandoning positions, after Peshmerga forces pushed the fighters out of vast areas of the Kurdistan Region, a Kurdish official said.

“ISIS has executed dozens of its own gunmen who fled from Shingal,” Ismat Rajab, a Kurdistan Democratic Party official, told Rudaw.

He said information had been obtained that the mass executions took place in the city of Mosul, which is still in ISIS control.