ISIS- SYRIA-THREAD

[Anthea]

Kobani

Where once there were warm houses full of love and tenderness now there is only rubble

There were large family gatherings where people used laugh and play

They were idyllic days that now exist only memories

The people of Kobani have been forgotten

Their once happy lives destroyed by the painful losses the they have suffered

Even if the Kurds manage to take full control of Kobani what is left there for the people to return to

Many of their friends and relations will never walk those streets again

Everyone seems more than happy to pay vast amounts of money to destroy Kobani

Nobody will pay even a fraction of that to rebuild Kobani surrounded as it is by IS on three sides and treacherous Turks on the fourth side

Every day we hear about yet more bombings and killings

We seldom hear anything about the people of Kobani

How are the people remaining in Kobani coping - where are those who left?

[Anthea]

L A Times

Islamic State seen as interloper by larger militant groups
By Raja Abdulrahim

Since declaring a caliphate, Islamic State has garnered support from more than a dozen Islamist militant groups in the Middle East and Asia, but the dearth of endorsements by many of the largest and most recognizable groups serves to underscore the limits of the newcomer's grand ambition.

The Al Qaeda breakaway group has proved a lightning rod for devout supporters and bitter enemies since entering the Syrian civil war in April 2013. Its sweeping advances into Iraq, gruesome tactics and, most pointedly, its declaration of an ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim state covering the wide portions of eastern Syria and northern Iraq that it now controls have led both to U.S.-led airstrikes and pledges of allegiance by 13 fellow Islamist militant groups.

Others have thrown their support behind Islamic State without placing themselves under the leadership of self-proclaimed caliph Abu Bakr Baghdadi.

But the best-known Islamist militant networks — such as major Al Qaeda affiliates the Shabab and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb in Africa, the Taliban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and Boko Haram in Nigeria — have not signed on to the movement that is seeking to position itself as the rightful leader of Muslims worldwide and the preferred destination for would-be Islamist fighters.

"These elements of support do exist, but I don't think the caliphate announcement was as galvanizing or caused the huge shift that ISIS hoped it would," said Aymenn Jawad Tamimi, a fellow at the Global Research in International Affairs Center in Israel, using a common acronym for Islamic State.

The closest the group has gotten to high-level backing was a recent statement by the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula affirming support "for our brothers against the global Crusader campaign." But the ideological differences between the groups is probably too great for this to lead to anything beyond solidarity.

Though the bump from its caliphate declaration may not have been as large as the group hoped, Islamic State's popularity among militants has drawn more into its fold.

"That's one trump card they have, and you see that a lot on their recruitment messaging; ISIS is still emphasizing that most foreign fighters coming to Iraq and Syria are joining them," Tamimi said.

Indeed, the tactic has the feel of a marketing strategy, coming from a group that has exhibited social media savvy. Thus far, though, they have scored the militant equivalent of D-list celebrity endorsements.

The Somali-based Shabab recently rejected an attempt by Islamic State representatives to buy its allegiance, according to a report by the U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors online militant activity.

"The majority of groups pledging support are smaller, lesser known groups that have weak or no ties to Al Qaeda central leadership, and are looking to affiliate themselves with [Islamic State] in order to bolster their own jihadist credentials," Evan Jendruck, a terrorism analyst at Jane's Terrorism and Insurgency Centre, said in an email.

For these mostly regionally focused groups, pledging to Islamic State has marked their first entry to the fray of global insurgency.

Islamic State's high media profile and continued momentum on the battlefield in Iraq and Syria has served to attract "smaller factions around the world looking for a parent organization to tap into," said Charles Lister, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center.

Those that have shown their support — if not complete loyalty — by funneling fighters to Islamic State include militant groups in Tunisia and the Gaza Strip. It remains to be seen what consequences this loyalty could have for Islamist militant causes beyond Iraq and Syria and whether Islamic State's brutality will spread.

"Beyond attention-grabbing headlines, actual insurgent conflicts remain largely unchanged, so far," Lister said.

In a speech in September, Islamic State spokesman Abu Muhammad Adnani called on Muslims to attack Westerners and specifically to "strike the soldiers, patrons, and troops of the tyrants. Strike their police, security and intelligence members, as well as their treacherous agents."

That same month, a French tourist was beheaded in Algeria by an Islamic State-linked group called Jund Khilafah, which had first warned that it would execute him within 48 hours unless France stopped airstrikes in Iraq.

In the video of the beheading, one of the killers said, "This is why the soldiers of the caliphate in Algeria have decided to punish France, by executing this man, and to defend our beloved Islamic State." It echoed the videos released by Islamic State in which American and British journalists and aid workers were beheaded in retaliation for airstrikes.

In the Philippines, the militant group Abu Sayyaf, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, threatened to kill two German hostages before releasing them on Oct. 17. The group had demanded that Berlin pull its support for the U.S.-led coalition and pay a $5.6-million ransom. Abu Sayyaf's spokesman said the ransom was paid.

Unlike Al Qaeda's central command, which has affiliates in several global hot spots, as well as more casual supporters, Islamic State demands nothing less than absolute fealty. That has alienated some potential supporters, who view Islamic State as an interloper that has risen to the top too quickly.

"There are a larger number of groups who are pledging affiliation to Al Qaeda to align themselves against ISIS," said Thomas Lynch III, a research fellow at the National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic Studies in Washington, D.C.

Islamic State has disregarded established covert methods by recruiting openly and indiscriminately, thus failing to learn the lessons of predecessors and providing Western intelligence units the ability to track communications sites and fighter locations through social media, Lynch said.

It has also openly threatened countries around its home territory, actions that other Islamist militants see as rash and careless. "The serious jihadi outfits and networks are really mobilizing against ISIS, who are seen in the jihadi space as a usurper," Lynch said.

Yet Islamic State continues to win support, even causing fractures in some groups.

Top officials, including the official spokesman, of the Pakistani Taliban — known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP — have pledged to Islamic State. The leader of TTP, an umbrella group of local and Al Qaeda-affiliated militants, has not done the same.

In Syria, U.S.-led airstrikes aimed at debilitating and defeating Islamic State have had the opposite effect on the group's popular backing. From Dair Alzour in the east to Aleppo in the northwest, residents and religious leaders have in part rallied behind Islamic State, which until recently was reviled and feared because of its brutal interpretation and implementation of Islam.

In Aleppo province, where the Western-backed Free Syrian Army and Islamic Front have controlled large chunks of territory, imams have taken to the pulpit in favor of Islamic State, speaking of the airstrikes as "a crusader war on Muslims," said Humam Halabi, a member of the Al Qaeda-affiliated Al Nusra Front.

The rise in ground support has corresponded with an exodus of fighters from other groups — especially foreign fighters — joining Islamic State's ranks.

"It encourages them to say that [Islamic State] is 100% right because they are the only ones getting struck by the West," he said. "They say these strikes are going to weaken them, but in opposite it is going to strengthen them."

http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast ... tml#page=1

[Anthea]

The Guardian

Inside the Islamic State’s capital: Red Bull-drinking jihadists, hungry civilians, crucifixions and air strikes

Activists tell of the Isis elite living in relative luxury as civilians face poverty, hunger, inflation and power shortages

Mark Townsend

The beleaguered inhabitants of Raqqa, self-proclaimed capital of the Islamic State (Isis), are suffering widespread hunger, crippling inflation, chronic power shortages and poverty so acute that emergency soup kitchens have been set up.

With no journalists, local or foreign, able to operate inside Syria’s sixth-largest city, courageous local activists have given the Observer a detailed account of life under the jihadists’ totalitarian regime, a rare glimpse of everyday life in the city.

Their testimony reveals the evolution of a community brutally divided into haves and have-nots, with Isis enjoying well-resourced services including “private” hospitals and a relatively high standard of living as many residents struggle to make ends meet.

Crucifixions of Isis opponents have taken place in Raqqa’s Paradise Square, as well as frequent beheadings and lashings for offences as minor as smoking a cigarette. Abu Ibrahim Raqqawi, founder of a network of activists called Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently, told the Observer: “Isis kills a lot of people, we see a lot of executions, a lot of beheadings. I have seen about five people crucified in the city. People are now calling Paradise Square Hell Square.”

Meanwhile the population is subjected to a rolling daily nightmare as the Syrian government launches air strikes in the morning, which are followed by coalition air raids in the evening.

When warplanes belonging to President Bashar al-Assad killed scores of residents last week, repeatedly targeting heavily populated areas of the city, Isis and its battery of anti-aircraft and missile defences did not fire a single round. The lack of response further enraged Raqqa’s inhabitants towards the extremists, according to witnesses.

“People are getting very angry because Isis do not shoot at the aircraft with their rockets, they just watch the people die. We have a situation where there are Syrian air strikes at the start of the day and coalition air strikes later and in between Isis is controlling and killing the people. Everybody is tired and afraid,” said Raqqawi.

The reports of the activists running Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently offer an insight into how the jihadists intend to run their embryonic caliphate, which so far has around six million people under its rule in northern Syria and northern Iraq.

Raqqawi portrays a dysfunctional economy presided over by an untouchable elite with extremists able to live handsomely as thousands of civilians struggle to afford basic food. The price of bread has risen 150%, from 37p to 94p or 250 Syrian pounds since September. Meanwhile, Isis fighters boast about drinking Red Bull, also costing 250 Syrian pounds a can, and getting paid a stipend equivalent to more than 30,000 pounds of local currency a month, around twice as much as the average wage of Syrians in that part of the country.

Despite the growing disparity in living standards between Raqqa’s residents and Isis – which reportedly earns more than $3m (£2m) a day in black market oil sales – the extremists do not appear interested in distributing their wealth to win favour with the local population.

“We have something here we call kitchen relief, like a soup kitchen, which gives one free meal a day to the people and has more than 1,000 families using it. Isis do not give this kitchen anything,” said Raqqawi.

Water has also become a precious commodity, with some families forced to obtain it from the Euphrates river, according to Raqqawi, after coalition air strikes destroyed the oil refineries and power supply to the city’s water pumps. Raqqawi said that the US air strikes that began hitting the city almost two months ago have ended up adversely affecting the civilian population and not just their intended target of Isis.

Speaking from Raqqa on Friday, Raqqawi said: “The city is suffering from poverty and disease. A big problem is that all the prices inside the city have become very expensive especially after the coalition air strikes. There is no electricity, everyone is dependent totally on the generators.

“When coalition air strikes destroyed the oil refineries inside the city, prices grew threefold. The money that the people have is not enough to buy food, which has become very expensive.”

By contrast Isis, he said, are living in relative luxury. He said that their generators are permanently turned on, whereas in the rest of the city, power is restricted to between three and five hours a day.

In addition, Isis-only hospitals are staffed with the best doctors and the latest equipment while civilians frequently die due to inadequate care: “People are dying from injuries because there is no medical equipment, no supplies, no doctors, no ambulance crews. Isis have their own hospitals where they do not allow the civilians to go. These hospitals have the best medical treatment, the best doctors.”

Anthea: Sound very similar to England - we have private hospitals with the latest equipment, the best medical treatment, the best doctors - ordinary people go to poorly staffed NHS hospitals

Activists, located in safe houses dotted throughout the city, use encrypted conversations online to exchange intelligence and evade attempts by teams of hackers employed by Isis.

Among their latest plea to the international community are calls for the US-led coalition to thwart air strikes by the Syrian government by imposing a no-fly zone above the city.

On Tuesday air strikes from Syrian government warplanes targeted at least nine sites in Raqqa, including a crowded market near its museum, and heavily populated civilian areas.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the air strikes had killed at least 95 people, among them three women and four children.

Raqqawi referred to the air strikes on Tuesday as the bloodiest since the start of the 2011 revolution, describing how two buses were caught up in the attack. All the passengers burned to death. The death toll was more than 200, he said, with 170 bodies taken to the city’s last remaining public hospital; another 50 bodies were burned beyond recognition.

No one, he said, knew precisely how many residents had been executed by Isis but he said that deaths from disease were rising, although he was unaware of any deaths from starvation despite the growing issue of poverty.

Raqqa’s population is still above 200,000 despite the air strikes, and Isis is said to have a residual force of between 3,000 to 5,000 in the city, although numbers change depending on levels of fighting elsewhere in the caliphate.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/n ... s-red-bull

[Anthea]

Associated Press

Syria claims terror groups used chlorine as weapon
By MIKE CORDER

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Syria's vice foreign minister denied Monday that his government ever used chemical weapons or chlorine during the country's brutal civil war and warned that terror groups are using such weapons.

Faysal Mekdad was speaking at a meeting of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons as the group comes close to fully eliminating Damascus' deadly stockpile of nerve agents and poison gas — helping international efforts to prevent terrorists using such weapons.

Mekdad said that terror groups "have used chlorine gas in several of the regions of Syria and Iraq."

It's not the first time such claims have been made. In October, Iraqi officials said militants from the Islamic State group used chlorine gas during fighting with security forces and Shiite militiamen north of Baghdad. The statements in Iraq came two days after Kurdish officials and doctors said they believed IS militants had released some kind of toxic gas in an eastern district of Kobani.

President Bashar Assad's government also is widely believed to have unleashed chemical weapons during the civil war, despite its repeated denials.

Chlorine gas is readily available and used in industry around the world, but can also be used as a weapon.

Angela Kane, the United Nations' disarmament chief, also acknowledged the new risks posed by terrorists.

"There is a very distinct threat that has arisen and actually also is being investigated by the OPCW with a fact-finding mission," she said, adding that various international bodies and the U.N. are coordinating efforts to fight terrorism.

In a preliminary report issued in September, the fact-finding mission concluded that a toxic chemical, almost certainly chlorine, was used "systematically and repeatedly" as a weapon in attacks on villages in northern Syria earlier this year, but didn't apportion blame.

The OPCW, a Hague-based body, won the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize.

http://news.yahoo.com/syria-claims-terr ... 32338.html

[Anthea]

The Guardian

‘Hell is never far away’ - the female medic risking her life for Aleppo

Umm Abdu has lost her husband and a son to the war in Syria, but the pistol-wearing woman refuses to abandon her embattled city
By Martin Chulov

Whenever she hears the helicopter, Umm Abdu tenses, collects her medical kit and runs through the lanes of Old Aleppo to the only working hospital in her neighbourhood.

It is a familiar routine: the thump of the rotor blades, the boom of the explosion from the barrel bomb released by the Syrian government troops far above, followed by Umm Abdu’s scramble towards the four-storey building that will receive the inevitable human carnage.

Not that the hospital is safe. Most large buildings around it have been obliterated by the same half-tonne bombs, leading those who work, live and die within its iodine-stained walls to believe that they are the real targets.

“Hell is never far away,” she says, resting on a gurney in what makes for a trauma area. She is the only woman on the floor, a black-clad figure working alongside three exhausted young men in green gowns to treat most of Aleppo’s victims of war.

Umm Abdu stands out for another reason: the steel pistol she holsters to her back when stitching or bandaging patients using the skills that echo her pre-war career as a wedding dressmaker. “Getting justice from this war has become a personal jihad for me,” she admits. “I can’t work without it [the gun] any more.”

Everyone who remains in the eastern half of this battered city has a story of deprivation and loss. And most, like 40-year-old Umm Abdu, have found ways to cope with life in a wasteland, where existence inches on but life has stopped. “I’ve used the weapons,” she says. “And then I’ve treated the people who were injured.”

The contradiction seems lost, or maybe even no longer relevant, in a conflict where death often comes from the skies. Barrel bombs, the Syrian war’s most savage weapon, are also its most indiscriminate killer.

Slowly, methodically, they have tipped the tide in the favour of the regime, which continues to edge around Aleppo’s north-eastern flank as its bombs erode the city of civilians, fighters, and hope.

Umm Abdu’s son, Yousef, was killed by a bomb three months ago while travelling on a minibus to work in the only other functional hospital in the city’s east. That attack killed 35 people, and gouged yet another giant hole through an urban landscape now difficult to distinguish among piles of rubble often dozens of metres high.

“That day was the worst of days,” she says, sitting in a darkened room of her home on the edge of Old Aleppo. Her surviving son, Abdullah, sitting next to her, says: “We shared the same bed for 17 years. “We did everything together: we played, we dreamed, we grew. Now he’s gone. What can I say.”

In the small flat she shares with her remaining children, Umm Abdu has placed three teddy bears on her pillow, two Free Syria Army flags and an Islamic flag above her bed, and her gun on her mattress. Her medicines are tucked away nearby.

In the early days of a war that promised hope, but has instead delivered three years of unrestrained brutality and an estimated 200,000 dead, Umm Abdu’s husband was shot dead by a regime sniper.

Eighteen months ago, while trying to retrieve a wounded man from a no-man’s land near her home, she too was almost killed. Snipers bullets ripped through her mouth and thigh. “It was only flesh,” she says. “It’s all working now.”

Rebel fighters who work alongside Umm Abdu in the city say the fighter-cum-medic is unique. “No one else risks her own life as much,” says a local leader, Abu Juud, who helps provide food for her family. “And no one else saves as many other lives.”

“We owe you a lot,” he tells her. “Aleppo owes you as well.”

Those who have remained in the east of the city – maybe 50,000 of the 1 million or so who once lived here – all speak with disconcerting candour about mothers, brothers, fathers and babies killed during the war.

“My three cousins were executed by Isis,” shrugs a fighter from the Islamic Front, the main opposition group in eastern Aleppo. “They betrayed them at a checkpoint.”

The fighter is sitting in a circle of eight men, all of whom had a similar story that they hadn’t deem worthy to share until asked about it.

“My sister was killed last year in al-Bab [a town near Aleppo],” says another fighter. “So was her son.” He shows photos of the boy stored on his mobile phone: “I loved him a lot.”

Another man says quietly but matter-of-factly: “My mother died in her home. I buried her in five pieces. She said she would rather die here than live on her knees in Turkey.”

Unfathomable loss is too evident at the hospital. “Most people who come here are ripped apart when they arrive,” says an Egyptian neurosurgeon who tries daily to repair the most seriously injured. “But I don’t have a working CT scan. Do you know how hard it is to do brain surgery without one?”

Despite this, the surgeon does have some successes. He leads us to a civilian who was shot through the brain a week earlier. “He can speak now,” the doctor says enthusiastically. “Say hello, Mohammed. Wave at me.” The patient wearily lifts his arm as his five-year-old daughter sits mutely on a bed across the room.

Nearby, a 30-year-old woman winces as another doctor sterilises a large gash in her thigh caused by a shell, not a barrel bomb.

Shells drop randomly on Old Aleppo many times each day. Later that afternoon, a deafening blast erupts near a fruit stall. The vendor doesn’t flinch as he hands over his produce; nor does his customer.

Fruit packed into carts – oranges, apples, bananas, watermelons – jut vividly from the grime of Aleppo in early winter; rare shocks of colour against a backdrop of grey. Those who can afford food are not starving, but the city itself – one of the oldest continually inhabited cities in the world – is all but broken.

Why, then, do people stay? “This is where I come from and this is where I will die,” says Ibrahim Khatan, 48, a resident of the Old City, who has remained behind with his seven young children. “Even if they surround us, we will sow potatoes in the fields and eat the chickens,” he says, pointing at a dozen hens and ducks his daughters have just fed by a mosque wall. “No one deserves a world without children. My oldest is 20 years old and my youngest, three months. I can’t take them away.”

Nearby, the Islamic Front maintains a field clinic, where its fighters are treated for wounds sustained in clashes with regime troops around the ancient citadel less than a mile away.

Umm Abdu travels here regularly along the ancient cobblestones slick with recent rains, to tend to a local commander, Abu Assad, who is recovering from a gunshot wound to his thigh.

“Before this war, I was a seamstress making wedding dresses,” she says. “My family are all from here. This place is essential to my identity.”

I ask her what could make her change her mind, and take her surviving son and three daughters, one of whom works at the same hospital, to safety in Turkey. “If they don’t unite,” she says of the various rebel groups battling the regime, “I will kill myself.”

“That’s not true, my sister,” says a startled bystander.

“You’re right,” Umm Abdu replies with a smile – a rare sight in northern Syria. “But they need to bring everything together. We all need to support each other.”

Later that night, the clouds that had kept the helicopters away from Aleppo clear, and the risk of barrel bomb attacks increase. As dawn gives way to daylight, bright yellow ambulances parked near the hospital seem like perfect target indicators for any bomber above. The skies, though, stay empty. Clapped out generators that provide neighbourhood power echo through alleyways. A slight wind blows broken doors against stone walls. Islamic Front fighters move slowly through the heart of the Old City’s streets; some shelter in a giant atrium near a soap factory that a dog-eared sign says is heritage listed.

Their choice of refuge is touted as a hospital for intellectually disabled, built in 1354. “There’s no one crazy here,” one rebel says amid the flotsam and jetsam of endless war. “All the people on the streets – those [civilians] who are still here – they’re the crazy ones.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/d ... are_btn_tw

[Anthea]

Business Insider

Syria war death toll now 'more than 200,000'

Syria's civil war has killed more than 200,000 people in less than four years, a monitoring group told AFP on Tuesday, adding that most were fighters from the two sides.

Beirut (AFP) - Syria's civil war has killed more than 200,000 people in less than four years, a monitoring group told AFP on Tuesday, adding that most were fighters from the two sides.

"We have documented the killing of 202,354 people since March 2011," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman said, adding that more than 130,000 of them were combatants.

http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-syri ... 14-12?IR=T

[Anthea]

DORUKSA NEWS 12

Kobane 'Street after street in ruins'

phpBB [video]

[Anthea]

Reuters

Thousands of Syrian refugees stranded in Turkish minefield: rights group
(Reporting By Kieran Guilbert; Editing by Tim Pearce)

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - A human rights watchdog urged Turkey on Wednesday to remove from its border with Syria landmines which have killed three people and wounded nine among more than 2,000 Syrian refugees camped in a minefield.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the refugees, living in their cars after fleeing the Islamic State onslaught in Syria, were stuck in the minefield because Turkey had refused entry for vehicles and livestock, and they did not want to abandon their belongings.

Turkey reported that its military laid more than 600,000 mines along the Syrian border between 1957 and 1998 to prevent illegal border crossings, HRW said.

"To fall victim to a landmine after losing your home and fleeing your country is a fate no one should have to endure," HRW arms director Steve Goose said in a statement.

Since fighting between Kurdish forces and Islamic State's Sunni militants began in September around the Syrian border town of Kobani, thousands of Syrians have fled into Turkey through a narrow strip of mined land along the border, known as the Tel Shair corridor, the watchdog said.

There have been at least 70 mine explosions in the area over the last two months, it said, citing aid workers as saying a mine exploded every two to three days, triggered by fleeing civilians or livestock.

One victim, Selma, whose home was destroyed by Islamic State, was carrying her one-year-old son across the border, with her seven-year-old daughter clutching her dress, when she stepped on a mine.

Her daughter suffered first degree burns on her face, and aid workers took Selma to a Turkish hospital where doctors amputated her left leg.

Selma, a farmer and mother of six, told HRW she had seen no signs warning that there were landmines in the area.

Of the deaths and injuries reported by HRW, the majority were youngsters aged between five and 15, it said.

In its annual Landmine Monitor report issued on Wednesday, the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and Cluster Munition Coalition (ICBL-CMC) said the number of recorded casualties of mines and other explosive remnants of war had fallen to its lowest level since 1999, but the number of child victims had risen.

In 2013, children made up almost half of the 2,403 civilian landmine casualties worldwide whose age was known, 7 percent more than in 2012, and HRW researcher Mark Hiznay said child refugees in the Tel Shair corridor were at particular risk due to their family responsibilities.

"Families expect their children to shepherd the livestock, find places to graze and collect materials to start fires," Hiznay told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone.

Hiznay said Turkey, which joined the Mine Ban Treaty in 2003, requiring it to destroy all mines, should clear its minefields immediately to avoid further harm.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/ ... RC20141203

[Anthea]

Reuters

Syria's Assad sees long war as Islamic State attacks base
By Sylvia Westall: Additional reporting by Alexander Dziadosz and Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Andrew Callus and John Irish in Paris and Seyhmus Cakan in Diyarbakir, Turkey; Editing by Gareth Jones

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview published on Thursday he expected his country's conflict to be long and difficult but vowed to defeat the insurgents battling to oust him and said he would not be driven from power.

Assad told the French magazine Paris Match nobody could predict when the war with Islamic State militants and other foes would end but said they had failed to win over the Syrian people, allowing his army to make advances.

Underscoring the challenge facing Assad, a monitoring group said at least 19 Syrian soldiers and militia men were killed when Islamic State militants attacked the Deir al-Zor airbase, one of the army's few remaining strongholds in eastern Syria.

"The Syrian army cannot be everywhere at once. Where it is not present, terrorists take the opportunity to cross borders and infiltrate in one area or another," Assad said.

"It is not about a war between two armies ...We are dealing with terrorist groups that infiltrate a town or village. So this war will be long and difficult," he added.

The text was also carried by Syrian state media on Thursday.

In extracts of the Paris Match interview published on Wednesday, Assad also branded U.S.-led air strikes in Syria since September as an "illegal intervention" that had made no difference in the fight against Islamic State.

Asked whether he saw his own departure from power as the solution, he said: "The state is like a ship: the captain does not escape in the storm. He does not quit the deck. If passengers need to leave, then he is the last to go."

MORE FIGHTING

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamic State had shelled the Deir al-Zor air base on Wednesday along with other areas still under government control.

Syrian state news said government forces had inflicted heavy losses on the Islamic State fighters in Deir al-Zor city.

Islamic State, which has seized swathes of territory in both Syria and Iraq this year, has been steadily consolidating its grip over Syria's oil-producing province of Deir al-Zor and now controls all but a few pockets.

Assad disputed a United Nations estimate that Syria's conflict had killed nearly 200,000 people since it erupted in 2011, saying figures in the media had been exaggerated.

He also rejected a suggestion that Syria had allowed Islamic State to flourish earlier in the war to wipe out other insurgents and accused the United States of creating conditions for the emergence of the group through its occupation of Iraq.

Islamic State is also fighting Syrian Kurds in the town of Kobani on the Turkish border. A second group of 150 Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga has entered Kobani from Turkey to replace a first group, peshmerga sources said on Thursday.

France's Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius dismissed Assad's comments in his interview on Thursday as "absurd", telling France 2 TV: "How can you imagine that somebody who caused 200,000 deaths can stay permanently at the head of his country?"

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2014/12/0 ... RF20141204

[Anthea]

Mail Online

Syrian rebels strike back with the HELL CANNON: Aleppo fighters build devastating homemade weapon that shoots propane gas cylinders

The Free Syrian Army have been using the homemade weapon during fighting in the besieged city of Aleppo
Has been nicknamed the 'hell cannon' and usually fires out propane gas cylinders that have been highly modified
The resistance fighters are said to take great pride in the cannon and are given a fact sheet on how to fire it

By Jennifer Newton

Firing improvised explosives with a range of around a mile, this is the homemade weapon of choice of the Free Syrian Army known as the 'hell cannon'.

The cannon has been widely used during the conflict in besieged cities such as Aleppo and usually fires out highly modified propane gas cylinders.

The improvised launcher is often used by the rebels as they only have access to small arms such as machine guns and have to make their own weapons and ammunition.



A shell is fired from the homemade weapon known as a 'hell cannon' by rebels from the Free Syrian Army in the ruins of the city of Aleppo



Before firing the cannon, the rebels wheeled the launcher into the street so they could put it in place before firing it



A rebel fighter uses a compass to determine the direction of the fire in Aleppo as they fight against forces of President Bashar al-Assad

But the rebel group are said to take great pride in the cannon, with resistance fighters watching online videos and given a fact sheet on how to fire it.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... nders.html

[Anthea]

Reuters

Islamic State launches attack on Syrian army air base: activists

At least 19 Syrian soldiers and militiamen were killed when Islamic State attacked one of the government's last remaining strongholds in the country's east, a monitoring group and a media activist said on Thursday.

The al Qaeda offshoot Islamic State has been gradually consolidating control of Syria's oil-producing Deir al-Zor province this year, but President Bashar al-Assad's forces have held on to several areas including the local military air base.

Islamic State launched its attack on the base on Wednesday night after detonating a suicide car bomb at a nearby building where government fighters congregated, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Islamic State fighters shelled the air base and other areas under government control.

The Observatory, which says it monitors Syria's war through a network of sources on all sides, said at least 19 government soldiers and loyalist militiamen and seven Islamic State fighters were killed. It said Islamic State captured heavy weapons including two tanks and an armored vehicle.

The media activist in Deir al-Zor province, who asked not to be named, said Islamic State had attacked the base from three directions and also launched an attack on parts of Deir al-Zor city controlled by the government.

There was no mention of the fighting on the Syrian state news agency SANA, which on Wednesday said government forces had inflicted heavy losses on Islamic State in Deir al-Zor city, destroying a car bomb driven by a Libyan suicide attacker.

Islamic State has been under pressure from U.S. air strikes in Syria since September, but that has not stopped it from launching attacks on Assad's forces and other targets to expel government forces and rival rebels.

Assad, who is shunned by the United States as part of the problem, said in an interview with a French magazine the U.S.-led air strikes were not working.

"The coalition has not struck since the attack on the air base started," the activist said. "The last coalition air raid was about a week ago."

Deir al-Zor province borders territories in Iraq also controlled by Islamic State. The province's oilfields are a major source of revenue for the group.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/ ... 0B20141204

[Anthea]

International Business News

Syria's New Super-Opposition Coalition Unites Moderates, Islamists -- And Leaves US With Limited Allies
By Alessandria Masi

A newly formed coalition of rebel brigades is the most unified, and most Islamist, the Syrian opposition has ever been. Uniting secular groups and hard-liners who believe in a fundamentalist reading of Sunni Islam, the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC) will strengthen opposition forces battling the Syrian regime, but it also leaves the U.S. with few moderate options on the ground.

Representatives from around 70 different opposition brigades met in Turkey over the past weekend, set aside their ideological differences and established the RCC. Unlike the Free Syrian Army, which, up to now, had been the face of the Syrian opposition, the RCC pulls together factions that had never cooperated before in the Syrian civil war. This leaves the U.S. with two options:

back radical RCC members in the interest of bringing down President Bashar Assad's dictatorship; or
keep trying to support whatever moderate groups remain outside of the new coalition.

The self-described “united body for the Syrian revolution” includes every major armed opposition force, except moderate group Harakat Hazm, formerly backed by the U.S.; some members of the Syrian Revolutionary Front; al Qaeda’s Jabhat al-Nusra; the Islamic State group; and Syrian Kurdish forces, according to Reuters. The council has also elected a representative leadership it intends will serve as an interim government if the regime falls. In the meantime, the RCC is focused on creating a unified military, and each militia is expected to contribute 100 fighters immediately, according to Lebanon's Daily Star.

“The goal of the initiative would be to create a joint leadership ... which would replace the collapsed institutions of the so-called Free Syrian Army, an exile platform supported by foreign governments as a way of funding and coordinating the rebels,” Syria expert Aron Lund wrote in a report published on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

In addition to fusing religious and secular opposition forces, the RCC aimed at getting “more substantial and unified foreign support.” Broadening its support options will also diminish reliance on the U.S. for weapons and funding.

The RCC as a unit has not received any formal foreign support as of yet, Abu Mohamed al-Joulani, the leader of Islamist fighter group Jabhat Ansar al-Islam, told International Business Times. “We do not count on support as much as we count on unity,” said al-Joulani. “But I do not think America should stop supporting such a project. In general, it is supportive of the majority of existing factions.”

Al-Joulani’s brigade and several other groups now in the RCC, who used to operate under the secular FSA banner, had at one point received U.S. weapons. The U.S. recently approved funding to arm and train Syria’s moderate opposition in the fight against the group formerly known as ISIS but has yet to actually choose a group. The opposition’s quest for unity, however, may have ended its chances for U.S. funding. Supporting the RCC would mean backing radical brigades that are now part of it -- such as Ahrar al-Sham, a radical group that believes in Salafism, an especially hard-line reading of fundamentalist Sunni Islam.

Ahrar al-Sham’s last-minute decision to join the RCC and not the Nusra Front, al Qaeda's Syrian offshoot, is a major win for opposition forces, as it had “long appeared as a missing link between mainstream Islamism and radical Salafi jihadism,” according to Lund.

Though the inclusion of radical brigades may have eliminated the possibility of U.S. support, it may have also created new opportunities for funding from the Gulf States. At least two brigades, the Shields of the Revolutionary Front and the Sham Legion, are "funded and supported" by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood, according to the Carnegie Endowement for International Peace. Though the Brotherhood is not designated as a terror group by the U.S., it is affiliated with one: Hamas. Jaish al-Muhajideen split from Hazm to distance itself from the U.S., and is supported by Qatar, as is former FSA brigade Liwa Fursan al-Haqq. The Islamic Front is widely believed to receive support from Saudi Arabia.

Though no formal foreign financial support has been announced, al-Joulani said, for his brigade at least, joining the RCC already had "a lot of benefits."

http://www.ibtimes.com/syrias-new-super ... ed-1735154

Anthea: Things are going from bad to worse and a lot more innocent people are bound to die

[Anthea]

Reuters

U.N. Syria envoy pitches Aleppo truce plan to rebels in Turkey
(Reporting by Dasha Afanasieva, additional reporting by Tom Perry in Beirut,
Jonny Hogg and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara; Editing by Nick Tattersall)

The United Nations peace envoy to Syria is holding talks with the Syrian opposition in Turkey to promote a cease-fire proposal for the northern city of Aleppo, opposition sources said on Monday.

Staffan de Mistura hopes the plan will establish truces in Aleppo, once Syria's commercial center and second-most-populous city, and allow aid into rebel districts.

Aleppo has been split roughly in half between opposition groups in the east and government troops in the west, with the remaining civilians subjected to barrel bombing campaigns. The fighting has severely restricted access for humanitarian aid.

De Mistura met on Sunday with Hadi al-Bahra, head of the western-backed National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, in Istanbul, according to Monzer Akbik, a senior member of the opposition group.

"It was a preliminary exchange of ideas, and we did not outline a final position," Akbik told Reuters, adding the two had discussed whether the plan should apply to all of Aleppo province or just the city.

He said any plan needed to be part of a comprehensive scheme involving a full political transition away from President Bashar al-Assad's rule.

De Mistura was also meeting opposition fighting groups in the southeastern city of Gaziantep on Monday, according to Akbik, a second opposition source and a senior aid worker.

The cease-fire initiative is risky for the disparate opposition groups. The Syrian government has stated its interest, but diplomats and analysts doubt its sincerity. They say Aleppo could face the same fate as the central city of Homs, where government forces have largely regained control.

The presence of al Qaeda offshoot Nusra Front which has fought both alongside and against other opposition groups and led the offensive near the main front line north of Aleppo, has complicated the picture further.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/ ... T920141208

...allow aid into rebel districts.

Anthea: Sadly by allowing aid into rebel controlled districts one is giving aid to the very rebels who are causing all the problem

[Anthea]

Reuters

Iran, Iraq, Syria to continue cooperation against Islamic State
(Reporting by Alexander Dziadosz in Lebanon, Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Crispian Balmer)

The foreign ministers of Iran, Syria and Iraq met in Tehran on Tuesday, saying that they would carry on working together to battle radical Sunni Muslim militants, Syrian and Iranian state media reported.

Iran has thrown its weight behind Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during Syria's three-year-old civil war and has also acknowledged sending military advisers to Iraq to help the Iraqi army in its battle against Islamic State fighters.

However, it is not part of a U.S-led coalition carrying out airstrikes against the radical Sunni Muslim militants who control swathes of Syria and Iraq, and has cast doubt on Washington's reasons for launching the attacks.

The Iraqi and Syrian foreign ministers attended a conference in Tehran on violence and extremism, local media reported, taking advantage of the occasion to hold rare, three-way talks with their Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif.

"At the end of the meeting ... it was confirmed that communication and coordination would continue, especially in fighting Da'esh and Nusra and other terrorist organisations," Syrian state TV said, referring directly to the Islamic State and Syria's al Qaeda offshoot.

"Iran has always stood by the Syrian and Iraqi people from the beginning to fight this threat. Our support will always continue," Zarif was quoted as saying.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/ ... UJ20141209

[Anthea]

Syria: who controls what (8 Dec 2014)

PLEASE follow link bellow for new map:

http://umap.openstreetmap.fr/fr/map/des ... 325/39.045