Capture of Palmyra shows Russian forces still key in Syria

[Sally]

I think if it weren't for the Russian forces, the Syrian troops would still be floundering.


Capture of Palmyra shows Russian forces still key in Syria
By Olga Rotenberg (AFP) 4 hours ago in World



Russia's role in helping Syrian forces recapture the ancient city of Palmyra has left the West scrambling to figure out President Vladimir Putin's game plan, following hopes he was edging away from supporting President Bashar al-Assad.

The seizure of the UNESCO World Heritage site on Sunday by forces fighting for Assad delivered the biggest blow so far to Islamic State jihadists and is a major coup both for Damascus and Moscow.

The military action comes after Putin announced he was withdrawing most of his forces from Syria, brokered with the United States a ceasefire in the country and raised Western hopes that Russia is edging away from its strong support for Assad.

"Russia is playing a decisive role in the (Palmyra) advance," said analyst Alexander Khramchikhin of the Institute of Political and Military Analysis in Moscow.

Russia's state media has highly publicised the return of planes from Syria after Putin's surprise withdrawal order on March 14, and on Monday showed soldiers loading three combat helicopters onto a Russia-bound cargo plane.



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http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/...ill-key-in-syria/article/461333#ixzz44EZxKpSh

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Here's more o' dat so-called 'peaceful' religion fer ya...

Mass grave found in Palmyra after recapture from Islamic State - military
Sunday 3rd April, 2016 - Syrian troops have identified 45 bodies so far in a mass grave found in the city of Palmyra after it was recaptured from Islamic State, a military source told Reuters on Saturday.

Syrian government forces backed by heavy Russian air support drove Islamic State out of Palmyra last Sunday, inflicting what the army called a mortal blow to militants who had dynamited the city's ancient temples. The communal grave, on the north-eastern edge of Palmyra, is the only one found so far in the city by the Syrian forces, the source said. It held the bodies of both civilians and Syrian army members captured by Islamic State. Syrian state news agency SANA said on Friday the grave contained many women and children and some of the bodies had been beheaded.

In May last year, as Islamic State took control of Palmyra, the hard-line Islamist militants were reported by Syrian state media to have killed at least 400 people in the first four days of control. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the five-year-old Syrian conflict through a network of sources on the ground, said that Islamic State had killed a number of people at an earlier time and buried them on the outskirts of the city.

The Observatory reported on Saturday that fighting between Syrian forces and Islamic State around Qaryatain to the west of Palmyra. It also reported, and Russian and Syrian air strikes in the same area and to the east of Palmyra around the town of Sukhna. Attacks by government forces against Islamic State positions to the around Palmyra are aimed at moving east across the desert to Islamic State-held Deir al-Zor near the Iraqi border, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has said.

Mass grave found in Palmyra after recapture from Islamic State - military

See also:

Salman Rushdie: It's Mistake for Obama Not to Call It 'Islamic Terrorism'
April 1, 2016 – Author Salman Rushdie--against whom Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini issued a death fatwa in 1989 because of his book "The Satanic Verses"--says that it is a miskake for President Barack Obama not to use the term "Islamic terrorism." “It’s a mistake that the president is making to not use the term Islamic terrorism,” Rushdie said Wednesday during a question-and-answer session hosted by New York University’s Washington, D.C. Academic Center.

Rushdie was responding to a question from an audience member on whether he had changed his views since he had written a 2001 New York Times opinion piece entitled Yes, This Is About Islam. “The answer is, no, they haven’t changed,” Rushdie said. “And I think, actually think it’s a mistake that the president is making to not use the term Islamic terrorism.” “Because, of course, it’s not what a majority of Muslims would think or want,” Rushdie explained. “Of course, it’s a freakish manifestation that has grown up inside Islam. But to say that it’s not about Islam denies what the killers themselves always say.” “You know, if you have a group of murderers who say--all of them--that they do it in the name of a particular prophet and a particular ideology, to say it’s not about that is just self-evidently evading the truth,” Rushdie said. “The question is what has happened inside Islam that allowed this manifestation to grow up inside it,” he said. "And it's quite clear to me that the people who suffer most from Islamic terrorism are other Muslims." “Terrorism in the Muslim world impacts Muslims first and most viciously, and most Muslims are as hostile to it as most non-Muslims are,” Rushdie went on to say. “All of that is true. But it’s still true that this is something happening inside Islam, not separate from it, inside it, and that needs to be defeated. We must first call it by its name.”

Rushdie said he understood the rationale behind trying to avoid using the term Islamic terrorism “for virtuous reasons of not wishing to stigmatize a large number of innocent people with the deeds of the few.” But he concluded that “it’s just simply not true to avoid it and one of the things that certainly I think writers are in the business of doing is to call things by their true name.” “There are reasons why this thing has been going on in the Muslim world and they are Muslim reasons, not all because the West is wrong,” Rushdie said. “We need to look at that. We need to call it by its name.”

Rushdie also referenced the Easter Sunday bombing in Lahore, Pakistan, saying, “There are very courageous writers and journalists, I mean, for example, after this recent Pakistani atrocity. There have been articles in Pakistan in which people have said we have allowed this thing to grow in our midst and it’s our fault, we have to do something about it. We can’t endlessly blame somebody else.” Rushdie’s fourth novel, The Satanic Verses, published in 1988, sparked worldwide controversy over what some considered to be an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad. In 1989, Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa for Rushdie’s death. Rushdie endured assassination attempts and lived under police protection for a time.

Salman Rushdie: It's Mistake for Obama Not to Call It 'Islamic Terrorism'

 

[waltky]

Uh-oh, here dey come back again...

In new push, IS advances toward Syrian city of Palmyra
May 11,`16 -- Islamic State militants advanced toward the central Syrian city of Palmyra on Wednesday, threatening to besiege the world-famous ancient site several weeks after the government recaptured it from the extremists.

The offensive came as a cease-fire over the northern city of Aleppo ticked down to its final hours, threatening to plunge the divided metropolis back into violence. A rocket attack on a government-held neighborhood late in the afternoon killed at least two people. Media allied with the IS group and other activists said the militants seized a strategically located but deserted rocket-launching site close to an air base less than 60 kilometers (40 miles) from Palmyra. For the government forces, the capture effectively severs a highway linking Palmyra to the government-controlled T-4 air base and the provincial capital Homs, threatening government supply routes.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and other activists confirmed the reported IS advance. The development comes after intense clashes with government troops near the air base, and a week after the extremist group advanced toward natural gas fields to the north. Al-Bayan radio reported that IS militants took control of the deserted site, seized two government checkpoints guarding the air base and downed a military helicopter to the north of the base. The Observatory also reported the downing of the aircraft but said the fate of its crew remains unclear.

Wednesday's capture "helps in severing the supply routes of the (Syrian) army from T-4 base to Palmyra, and tightening the siege on the city," the IS-linked radio report said. Syrian state media denied reports that the road between Homs and Palmyra was cut. Syrian troops, with the help of Russian airstrikes, regained control of the world-famous ancient city in March, after IS had controlled it for nearly 10 months. During their rule, IS destroyed many of Palmyra's relics and displaced its residents. Meanwhile, an airstrike on a medical point in IS-held territory north of the eastern city of Deir el-Zour killed at least seven people, among them a child, the Observatory reported. American, Russian, Syrian, and other air forces are known to conduct raids on the IS group in the area. It was unclear who was behind the attack on the village of Shaheil.

The IS advance on Palmyra comes despite a partial cease-fire with the mainstream opposition militias that was intended to allow the government and its international allies to focus their efforts on the extremist group and its rival Al-Qaida branch, the Nusra Front. That truce, brokered by the United States and Russia, broke down in the northern city of Aleppo. Nearly 300 people were killed in less than two weeks, in strikes that also targeted hospitals and civilian areas. Human Rights Watch quoted rescue workers as saying that in one airstrike on a hospital in a rebel-held area of Aleppo, 58 civilians were killed, including medical staff and many patients. On the other side, a government-area hospital was hit and at least 20 people were killed in shelling blamed on the rebels.

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