US Coalition jihadis suffer major blow in East Ghouta

… from  Southfront

[ Editor’s Note: I had not used this term of “US Coalition Jihadis” before, and I really should have, as the shoe fits. Without US support, done to keep a lot of the Syrian Army tied up defending Damascus, the Syrian people would not have suffered anywhere near as much as they have.

When this campaign to clear Ghouta is completed, it will remove a major lever the US Coalition has been planning to use to disrupt the political talks. The big Palestinian Yarmouk camp will be next, as symbolically Damascus must be fully secure to credibly begin planning for an election.

This first video is of a Press TV interview on Saturday when the first jihadis were taken out, one militant group’s captives from another group.

Also ignored by the West is the ultimatum yesterday from Damascus to “good” militants south of the capital in the al-Qadam district, that they have 48 hours to reconcile and evacuate their positions or they will face attack by the SAA and Russian air support.

This shows that the SAA is clearing all of these pockets so refugees can begin moving back into their former areas to begin the rebuilding. The more of this that happens, and the sooner, the more that support for the Assad government and the Army will grow when these returning refugees see what the militants and the US Coalition have done to them.

These were war crimes on a country that did not attack the US with even one terror attack on the US mainland or anywhere in the world other than its terror proxies. This has been nothing less than a war crime, and even Obama will never be able to wash off the stain.

He is sitting pretty, with lots of money when so many were wiped out. He can live with that and his Nobel Peace Prize which he never had the good sense to return, an affirmative action award that will go down in history as such … Jim W. Dean ]

– First published … March 11, 2018 –

Note: The video below is in Arabic but I used it because we have been getting no drone footage so we can eyeball what the combat landscape is like. You will see it is flat, with no hills or taller buildings in the countryside, so you do not have much line of site observation.

You find out where the enemy is when he starts shooting at you so you can then order artillery and airstrikes. The game for the jihadis is to keep moving, laterally and with counter attacks so they dodge the big guns.

This is how the Syrians have been keeping losses low. They like to use infantry to clear strong points once they have been shelled. The video has some good shots of the jihadi abandoned defenses, including some with moats, a surprise to see… JD.

*

On March 11, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) and the Tiger Forces supported by the Russian Aerospace Forces split the East Ghouta pocket into two parts and fully isolated the Duma district after they had captured the strategic district of Mudayrah, according to the Hezbollah media wing in Syria.

Following the liberation of Mudayrah, SAA and Tiger Forces units reached the SAA positions around the Armored Vehicles Base.

Currently, the Jaysh al-Islam militant group is besieged in the Duma district, while Faylaq al-Rahman, Ahrar al-Sham and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) are besieged in the rest of the East Ghouta pocket.

According to Syrian pro-government sources, this major breakthrough will allow the SAA to negotiate with Jaysh al-Islam face to face. This means that a peaceful solution in Douma is more possible now as Faylaq al-Rahman and its allies have sabotaged all the previous peaceful efforts.

Only minutes after the SAA advance, the Qatari al-Jazeera TV claimed that the SAA had attacked civilians in the Irbin district in the western East Ghouta pocket with “chlorine gas”. As usual, the Qatari channel didn’t provide any evidence what so ever to support its claims. Moreover, several Syrian opposition sources didn’t release any reports about the supposed “chemical attack”.

Over the last three months, militants in the East Ghouta and the mainstream media have claimed that the SAA have used chemical weapons against civilians dozens of times. However, they have never presented any real evidence. Even the US acknowledged on one occasion that it got no evidence to support these claims.

The recent Al-Jazeera report is likely nothing more than a propaganda stunt aimed at providing a media cover for militants. Some opposition figures believe that only a US military action could save the besieged the militants in East Ghouta.

Jim W. Dean

Jim W. Dean is VT Editor Emeritus.  He was an active editor on VT from 2010-2022.  He was involved in operations, development, and writing, plus an active schedule of TV and radio interviews.  He now writes and posts periodically for VT.

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