Syrian rebels recapture village in country’s west

Moscow, which has maintained a military presence in Syria for decades as an ally of the ruling Assad family, had an estimated 2,000 personnel in the country when it began air strikes on September 30.

After the initial shock of intensive Russian airstrikes, Syrian rebels on the receiving end of a major offensive say better organization and new tactics have helped them to stem losses and fight back.

“There has been an increase in Russian air activity this week”, said Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. Steve Warren, adding the Russian-backed forces are meeting with “mixed success”.

“This morning, it was completely liberated”, Fares Al-Bayoush, whose rebel group Fursan Al-Haq is taking part in the fighting, told Reuters.

The Obama administration’s policymakers nevertheless appear determined not to allow unpleasant realities to interfere with its propaganda line on Syria, which is that it is up to Russian Federation and Iran to take care of the problem by somehow wringing concessions from the Assad regime. Photo courtesy of Jund al-Aqsa.

More than 120,000 people have been driven from their homes since the Russian bombing campaign started, according to the UN.

The reception of Syrian deputy foreign minister Mikdad in Tehran was one message to Russian Federation.

Russian ground staff members load a Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jet with weapons at the Hmeymim air base near Latakia, Syria, in this handout photograph released by Russia’s Defence Ministry October 22, 2015.

They “seized full control of the town of Morek after a fierce offensive”, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group.

It was announced last week that Iran would be invited to attend the upcoming peace talks in Vienna on the Syrian crisis, which took place among major powers from October 30 to October 31.

The second source said: “Saudi is in a state of madness, escalating to the greatest degree”.

The hearing followed the White House announcement last week that it was deploying as many as 50 special operations forces to Syria.

There are no reasons why America should support Bashar al-Assad and there are plenty of reasons for us to oppose him.

She said Secretary of State John Kerry was hoping that if the USA and others could “rope” Russian Federation into the diplomatic effort, it would lead Moscow to seek a peaceful solution different from the military intervention they are engaged in today. Very few fighters identify with other groups, with the exception, perhaps, of a handful of fringe groups at the sidelines – such as the Movement for the Freedom of Sham and the Army of Islam.

The battles have continued in the farmland and villages all along the Idlib-Hama border. In parts of Hama, jihadi fighters from Uzbekistan and other parts of Central Asia with the hard-line Syrian rebel group Army of Conquest have played a big role in repelling government attacks, Abdurrahman said. Experts have accused Russian Federation of obscuring its true intentions in Syria – to prop up the Assad regime rather than defeat ISIS – but now that Russian Federation has apparently been provoked by ISIS (also known as the Islamic State), it might be forced to hit back. The government’s use of highly explosivebarrel bombs, for instance, has killed thousands of people who have just had the misfortune to live in rebel-controlled areas. Backed by the strikes, Syrian troops have been trying to reach Kweiras and break the siege. By March 2015, with the delicate nuclear negotiations still under way, the American-led coalition in Iraq launched airstrikes to support Iranian-backed militias and Iraqi troops fighting IS for the key city of Tikrit, which they eventually won back.

It is doubtful that Kerry mistakes such a patently propagandistic position for the much more intractable Syrian political-military realities. The town lies on the main north-south highway that links Syria’s main cities.

“Afandi said the issues of the Russian side promising protection to the FSA from the Syrian Army will be discussed also”, as reconciling the FSA and the army in the foreseeable future seems unlikely”.