And the Good News Is ....!

"The liberation of Boukamal is of great importance because it is a declaration of the fall of this group's project in the region generally and the collapse of its supporters' illusions to divide it, control large parts of the Syria-Iraq borders and secure supply routes between the two countries."
General Ali Mayhoub, Syrian Army spokesman

This frame grab from video provided Wednesday by the government-controlled Syrian Central Military Media shows a tank firing on militants' positions on the Iraq-Syria border. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Islamic State militants have withdrawn from their last stronghold. (Syrian Central Military Media, via AP)

"After the second station was liberated, the buildings were almost destroyed by the fierceness of the fighting."
"We did not care much about it and we did not check the extent of the damage until a team of experts came and did tests. The second station is okay and its liberation is an important achievement."
Syrian military officer, in Badia

"The focus of the resistance has redrawn the border and at the same time opened communications from Tehran to Baghdad and up to Damascus, Beirut and occupied Palestine, and thus the axis has completely thwarted the US plan, which was to dismember these alliances."
Iraqi Popular Resistance 

"Ten days ago, Saleh Musallam, head of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), announced that the militants of Qusd would head for Albu Kamal. The announcement came days after Syrian forces took over the oil field. This announcement of the American will to control the entire Syrian-Iraqi border and prevent the convergence of the Iraqi popular resistance with the Syrian army and its allies from the axis of resistance confirms this statement by Jaafar al-Husseini, a spokesman for the Hezbollah Brigades in Iraq:' If al-Qaim was an American red line, a break from the Iraqi side with the advance of the popular crowd and the liberation of the al-Qa’im'."
"There is no doubt that exceeding the American will in this regard was not an individual decision, but the shared desire of nations from Russia to Tehran and Baghdad.  The liberation of the Syrian city of Boukmal also required a consensus between the combat forces on the ground to shatter the American red line that opposed the will of the Syrian people and their army."
Syria 360 / Internationalist News Agency

SYRIA 360° | INTERNATIONALIST NEWS AGENCY

The last stronghold of the Islamic State militants in Syria has now been taken from their grasp. Taking the strategic town bordering Iraq has led the fighters of ISIL to disperse throughout villages and towns in the Syrian desert. From where it can be expected they will continue to fulminate and conscript townspeople and villagers into their battle for a caliphate reborn. The town of Boukamal has been declared by the Syrian military to have been liberated following conflict where they say, a large number of ISIL fighters were killed including some leaders.

The Syrian military has continued to follow the fleeing Islamic State fighters with the intention of apprehending them in various desert locations."Daish is finished. Live", triumphantly declared a television journalist with the pro-Syrian Al-Ikhbariya. Which is indeed droll, coming from a regime that has slaughtered over a half-million of its own citizens using crudely barbaric methods of mass destruction in the process, from poison gas attacks to barrel bombs, destroying immense areas of the country's unique and historical infrastructure in the process.

It hasn't been the dreaded Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant that created millions of refugees desperate to escape the killing machine of Bashar al-Assad's military. As brutally bestial as ISIL has been in killing and enslaving Yazidis, targeting Christians and seeking out Shiites to practise their medieval-inspired torture and atrocity-killing designs on, to enable the production of shocking videos that has served ISIL well in their international propaganda to enlist more fighters, the Assad regime has proven to be equally murderous.

But it is Islamic State atrocities and threats, along with its inspiring of overseas ISIL supporters in targeting Europe and North America in their virally vicious jihad campaign that has earned the world's fearful contempt and determination to destroy them. While attention has been focused on the Assad regime's killing machine, no effort has been made to punish al-Assad beyond the rhetoric of threats, leading to a final weary air of resignation that he will continue to rule Syria, supported by Hezbollah, Iran and Russia with Turkey thrown in for bad measure.

ISIL fighters have dispersed into the Syrian desert west and east of the Euphrates with an American intelligence estimation of between 2,500 and 3,500 ISIL terrorists around Boukamal, now dispersed. They are known to have a presence still, near Syria's capital, Damascus. They should in fact, be inspired and sufficiently determined to penetrate the capital's web of defense around Bashar al-Assad, but likely will not, despite the ironic justice it would represent.

Iraqi forces had seized the town across the border, Qaim, to control a crossing between the two countries with strategic value. The two-pronged assaults, that of Russian-backed Syrian forces and allied (read: Iranian-linked Shiite) militias on the one hand, and U.S.-backed Iraqi and Syrian fighters on the other, creating simultaneous offensives is primarily what exhausted Islamic State's ability to defend its holdings.

According to a senior Iraqi official, an agreement was reached to send Iraqi paramilitaries to Syria to  help in the Boukamal operation. Of course they would, for after all, the Islamic Republic of Iran has the last word of command in both Iraq and Syria; another of their strategic missions to achieve a Shiite crescent fulfilled.

Labels: Hezbollah, Iran, Iraq, Islamic State, Russia, Syria

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, November 11, 2017