Al-Qaeda & FSA launch new offensive in southern Syria, threaten Druze town

[Bleipriester]

Currently, the SAA and NDf try to beat them back. Whether the IDF shelled the government forces or the rebels, in unclear. AMN reports attacks on the SAA but other sources claim the opposite. This can be true, as Israel has a Druze population, that already threatened to go to Syria to support the government of Bashar-al Assad.

HTS (formally al-Nusra)

Al-Qaeda gains ground in the Golan Heights, assaults major Syrian Army stronghold

 

[irosie91]

Currently, the SAA and NDf try to beat them back. Whether the IDF shelled the government forces or the rebels, in unclear. AMN reports attacks on the SAA but other sources claim the opposite. This can be true, as Israel has a Druze population, that already threatened to go to Syria to support the government of Bashar-al Assad.

HTS (formally al-Nusra)

Al-Qaeda gains ground in the Golan Heights, assaults major Syrian Army stronghold

try again capt blei-----the Druze --in Golan and in Israel and in
Lebanon and in Syria are------actually, very divided

 

[Bleipriester]

Currently, the SAA and NDf try to beat them back. Whether the IDF shelled the government forces or the rebels, in unclear. AMN reports attacks on the SAA but other sources claim the opposite. This can be true, as Israel has a Druze population, that already threatened to go to Syria to support the government of Bashar-al Assad.

HTS (formally al-Nusra)

Al-Qaeda gains ground in the Golan Heights, assaults major Syrian Army stronghold

try again capt blei-----the Druze --in Golan and in Israel and in
Lebanon and in Syria are------actually, very divided

Read here:
Israeli military says ready to protect Druze village in Syria

 

[irosie91]

what point are you struggling to make, capt. ?
How many druzies told you.....what?

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - ISIS gettin' dey's butts kicked...

IS loses Deir al-Zour in Syria and al-Qaim in Iraq on same day
Fri, 03 Nov 2017 - The group loses Deir al-Zour in Syria and al-Qaim in Iraq, in major blow to self-styled caliphate.

So-called Islamic State (IS) has lost control of two of its last remaining strongholds in Syria and Iraq. Early on Friday Syria's army announced it had taken Deir al-Zour. Later in the day the Iraqi prime minister said al-Qaim, across the border, had been recaptured by government forces. The town was taken "in record time", PM Haider al-Abadi said. Iraqi forces say they have also seized the last border post between Iraq and Syria that was held by IS. Last month, a US-backed Syrian alliance took control of Raqqa in Syria, the former capital of Islamic State's self-styled "caliphate". In July, Mosul - Iraq's second-largest city - was taken from IS after months of fighting. The territorial ambitions of IS are now all but destroyed although its ideology remains powerful, says the BBC's Arab Affairs Editor Sebastian Usher.

Why are these losses important?

IS had held most of Deir al-Zour since 2014. It was important because of its proximity to the border with Iraq. While the Syrian army said it had been re-captured, other reports said government forces and their allies were clearing the last pockets of resistance from IS in the city. Al-Qaim was the last sizeable territory held by IS in Iraq. The operation to retake the city and the surrounding area was launched last week. Soldiers, police, Sunni tribesmen and mostly Shia paramilitary fighters, some backed by Iran, took part in the assault. IS had designated the area on both sides of the border as its "Euphrates Province" and used it to transfer fighters, weapons and goods between Iraq and Syria. The cross-border province was also a symbol of the jihadists' intention to eradicate all the region's frontiers and lay to rest the 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement, an emblem of the colonial division of the area resented by many Arabs.

What territory does IS still control?

In Syria, the militant group is now confined to a few pockets in Deir al-Zour province. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Syrian government forces have been carrying out separate offensives there with the aim of taking control of Albu Kamal, a key crossing with Iraq. In some areas the US-backed SDF and Russia-backed Syrian army have taken up positions just a few kilometres apart. An SDF spokesman told the BBC they were still encountering some resistance with the militants using suicide cars and trucks, thermal missiles and mortars. In some towns and villages there was house-to-house fighting, Kino Gabriel said. IS has also suffered a series of defeats in recent months to Iraqi government forces, who are advancing along the Euphrates river on the other side of the border. There are about 1,500 IS fighters left in the area, the US-led coalition fighting IS says.

Reports say the Syrian army are clearing the last pockets of IS resistance in Deir al-Zour​

Is this the end for IS?

IS has now been driven out of about 95% of the land the group once held in Iraq and more than 4.4 million Iraqis have been freed from its rule, according to the US-led coalition. The group has just "months [remaining] at most as a proto-state", the senior Royal Air Force (RAF) officer overseeing British airstrikes against IS in Iraq and Syria said on Friday. But Commodore Johnny Stringer told journalists in London that IS would "almost certainly morph into an insurgent organisation" trying to launch attacks in the two countries.

What now in Syria?

See also:

Fresh losses in Syria and Iraq push Islamic State 'caliphate' to the brink
November 3, 2017 - Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate was all but reduced on Friday to a pair of border towns at the Iraq-Syria frontier, where thousands of fighters were believed to be holding out after losing nearly all other territory in both countries.

Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate was on the verge of final defeat on Friday, with Syrian government forces capturing its last major city on one side of the border and Iraqi forces taking its last substantial town on the other. The losses on either side of the frontier appear to reduce the caliphate that once ruled over millions of people to a single Syrian border town, a village on a bank of the Euphrates in Iraq and some patches of nearby desert.

Officials on both sides of the border said its final defeat could come swiftly, although they still fear it will reconstitute as a guerrilla force, capable of waging attacks without territory to defend. Iraq’s Prime Minister Haidar Abadi announced that government forces had captured al-Qaim, the border town where the Euphrates spills from Syria into Iraq. That leaves just the village of Rawa further down river on the opposite bank still in the hands of the ultra-hardline militants, who swept through a third of Iraq in 2014. On the Syrian side, government forces declared victory in Deir al-Zor, the last major city in the country’s eastern desert where the militants still had a presence. Government forces are now about 40 km away from Albu Kamal, the Syrian town across the border from al-Qaim, and preparing for a final confrontation.

A U.S.-led international coalition which has been bombing Islamic State and supporting ground allies on both sides of the frontier said before the fall of al-Qaim that the militant group had just a few thousand fighters left, holed up in the two towns on either side of the border. “We do expect them now to try to flee, but we are cognisant of that and will do all we can to annihilate IS leaders,” spokesman U.S. Colonel Ryan Dillon said. “As IS continues to be hunted into these smallest areas ... we see them fleeing into the desert and hiding there in an attempt to devolve back into an insurgent terrorist group,” said Dillon. “The idea of IS and the virtual caliphate, that will not be defeated in the near term. There is still going to be an IS threat.” The group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, is believed to be hiding in the desert near the frontier.

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