Thoroughly cowed by the U.S. airstrikes, Islamic State jihadis have been fleeing in terror — nah, just kidding. The Islamic State holds Barack Obama in utter contempt, and is continuing with business as usual, scoring another important victory over its foes. “Jihadists ‘capture key base from Syrian army,'” AFP, August 8, 2014:
Beirut (AFP) – Islamic State jihadists captured the key Brigade 93 Syrian army base in Raqa province overnight, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Friday.
“The IS took Brigade 93 after fierce fighting and a triple suicide bomb attack,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said, adding that government forces now hold just one position in the province at Tabqa military airport.
He said IS fighters were now preparing to attack the airport, the last bastion in the province of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.
Since February, most of Raqa has been held by the Islamic State after the jihadists ousted mainstream rebel groups battling Assad’s regime.
Some troops had already pulled out of Brigade 93 in July after IS captured Division 17, another base in the region where at least 85 people were killed in fighting or summarily executed shortly afterwards, the Britain-based Observatory said.
It said that in the fighting for Brigade 93, “36 soldiers were killed, some of whom were beheaded, while others died in the fighting or in the initial triple suicide bombing” that launched the attack.
At least 15 jihadists were killed, including the three suicide bombers who blew themselves up at the entrance to the base at the start of the attack on Wednesday night.
“Assad had pledged to retake Raqa. Not only has he failed to do so, he has lost his bases,” Abdel Rahman said.
When he was sworn in for a third term, after an election denounced by the opposition and much of the international community as a sham, Assad vowed to free Raqa of “terrorists”.
His regime uses the catch-all term to refer to all of those who oppose Assad’s rule, political opposition and armed rebels alike.
Since joining the conflict in Syria in spring 2013, IS has seized control of almost all of Raqa and Deir Ezzor provinces on the border with Iraq, where it has waged a devastating offensive since June.
At the end of June, IS declared a caliphate in territory it controls in Syria and Iraq.
The Observatory estimates that more than 170,000 people have been killed in Syria since March 2011, the start of a peaceful uprising against Assad’s regime that developed into an armed revolt.
John C. Barile says
You had us there for a moment, Robert. Ha ha. Good one.
John C. Barile says
I noticed how IS–as far as I can tell–mounts operations throughout much of Syria, and holds or contests half of it. Like the natural gas field they overran located just north of fabled Palmyra in the center of the country; IS has outlying pockets of its fighter as far as Lebanon and Quneitira near the Israeli Golan.
John C. Barile says
Outlying pockets of its fighters, that is.
Beagle says
From a US foreign policy perspective (Obama, Graham, McCain) this is a good thing right? Of course just across the former border of Iraq it would be a bad thing. This means Assad is closer to going I believe.
John C. Barile says
So it seems.
zulu says
Hundreds of Yazidi women taken captive by ISIS militants with ‘vicious plans,’ Iraqi official says
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/08/08/hundreds-of-yazidi-women-have-been-taken-captive-by-isis-militants-human-rights-minister-says/?__federated=1
Tim says
Human rights was mentioned here. What human rights in Islamic countries? Did the author mean male rights?
John C. Barile says
This defeat and loss of Division 17 is a devastating blow to Assad and his government. What’s left? Damascus, Homs, the Mediterranean coast?
IS, it seems, has all the hideous strength of preternatural evil behind it.
As appalling as they are (severed heads lining public streets, e. g.), things are likely to get worse, much worse.
Charli Main says
” the hideous strength of preternatural evil behind it”
Absolutely correct on this. Satan is doing a brilliant job of running interference for his Muslim disciples . Islam, the tool of Satan, used by Him to spread death and destruction through the World.
John C. Barile says
Islam eats its own.
tpellow says
Now that Obama is taking reluctant action against the barbaric cruelty of Islamic State’s jihadists, will the West’s political class now warn the non-Muslim people of the West to be particularly vigilant of Islamic State’s many Muslim sympathisers and activists inside Western countries?
And are the West’s internal security services increasing their surveillance of the internal Islamic jihad threat?
No more immigration into the West from Islamic countries.