Military Updates for the week starting June 15th
June 15th: Damascus province: SAA captures Al Ahmadiya near the international airport, seen here.
June 16th: Syrian perspective reports advances by SAA in Deir ez zor city, SOHR reports advances by the rebels in the city.
June 16th: Damascus province: Blast hits the perimeter of Mezzeh airport in west damascus, this was followed by a firefight according to some sources.
June 17th: Reports the rebels have been receiving small numbers of Mistral MANPADS from France and Saudi Arabia.
and http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/17/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE95G0MR20130617.
June 17th: Aleppo province: A suicide bomber hit a military base just east of Aleppo international airport. Rebels claim 60 dead, but this is unconfirmed, and likely exaggerated. Though from the video its clear some casualties must have been sustained if the truck got anywhere near the base.
Source:http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/06/2013617114424685997.html
Alleged Video of the bombing:http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b79_1371469150
Map of the base: http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=36.174673&lon=37.296524&z=15&m=b
June 18th: Damascus province: Fighting continues across the country, however it appears to be most heavy in Damascus today, where the SAA is pressing rebel forces in several areas of the capital and it's surroundings.
Also related, a video here by the pro-government ANNA news showing what appears to be the SAA held areas of Jobar district in damascus, a current hot spot of fighting.
June 19th: The pro-rebel SOHR and other sources have been reporting an intensification of air and artillery strikes at Rastan town in the last few days. The town is on the road between Hama and Homs, and this may be an identification that the SAA intends to move on the town after more troops have become available to them due to conclusion of military operations in nearby Qusayr. Securing the road would be a major boost to SAA forces in both cities and may give the SAA enough momentum to push on to Idlib province, where the rebels have a very strong presence.
Also something that's not been very much talked about is the battles going on between rebel and kurdish forces in Ifrin town, in Aleppo province. These clashes have been ongoing since late last month when rebels moved to besiege the town after claiming the kurds there had been cooperating with the government. Since then they hadn't made much progress against the Kurds, and today the rebels seemed to have pulled out of several checkpoints they set up in the countryside of Ifrin. Whether this is a ploy to lure Kurdish fighters away from their defensive positions, or if rebels have decided to move on Aleppo instead is unknown at this time.
June 20th: 11 rebels were killed by the SAA at the Sakhour bridge in Aleppo city according to the pro-rebel SOHR. This was collaborated by the pro-government Syrian Perspective too. Video and picture here. The SAA has been attempting to push into the district for the past few days, control of the the bridge would cut off a supply route to rebels in other parts of the city. The bridge in question is seen here.
The SOHR is also reporting the rebels have overrun a police building near the city of Qamisli in northeastern Syria. This would mark an unusually heavy fighting for an area that has only seen small scale skirmishes in comparison to the rest of the country. I have no video evidence nor can I find it on the map yet. If I do I'll update this post.
June 21st: Rebel pull out from Ifrin was a ploy, fighting resumes. http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/20/us-syria-crisis-kurds-idUSBRE95J0TH20130620
Rebels are saying they have received the weapons they have been calling for including anti-tank and anti air weapons.
Al Arabiya is saying amongst the AA weapons is the SA-8 Geko, which is a mobile SAM launcher.
NOTE: I've had to cut out some info and shorten parts of this update as it was simply too long. To get the full version check out the submissions for each day on my blog here
Also apologies for the messy updates this week, its been a bit awkward writing two separate set of updates for this and for my blog so I've resorted to mainly copying and pasting from the blog. I'll hopefully improve my method for next week.
Questions are welcome as always.
Posted Jun 21, 2013, 6:14 PM UTC