Win Some, Lose Some
"Our group did this. The soldiers were using the hotel to sleep in and as a place to position snipers from."
"We have made many tunnels like this and have a project for each of them. Now the program is ready and there will be many surprises for the regime."
Dr. Mahmoud, Islamic Front
"Today's explosion was as powerful as two barrel bombs that the regime uses."
Hussein Nasser, Islamic Front, Aleppo
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| Two Syrian national flags hang on a pole as government officials inspect damages in the old city of Homs, Syria, Thursday, May 8, 2014. Hundreds of exhausted Syrian rebels withdrew Wednesday from their last remaining strongholds in the heart of Homs, surrendering to President Bashar Assad a bloodstained city that was once the center of the revolt against him. For Assad, it is a powerful victory ahead of presidential elections. For the rebels, the dramatic exit after two years of enduring grueling assaults and siege captures their sense of abandonment amid world reluctance to help shift the balance of power on the ground. |
Lest Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad gloat too readily over his most recent victory in re-claiming Homs from the starved-out rebels, once their key bastion, it seems that his regime will experience many such counter-victories courtesy of the Sunni rebels or their Islamist counterparts in battle against the Shia regime. The sectarian war, warn the experts, is nowhere near finished; it may yet go on for years.
Holding out little hope to the millions of displaced Syrians, mostly Sunni, who have seen their homeland collapse before their eyes in vicious government troop assaults against civilian enclaves accused by the regime of harbouring "terrorists". Government troops exulted as they watched UN personnel supervise the evacuation from the Old City of gaunt, demoralized rebels and their families routed to rebel-held towns north of Homs from where they vow to continue their insurrection.
The fragmentation of the country continues apace, as the death toll mounts and people huddle in misery in refugee camps, mourning for their country, and for their dreadful circumstances, much less a future that holds little hope of restoring them to the comfort of peace and security. Homs appears a tapestry of massive destruction, with garbage, glass, fallen trees and crumbled concrete littering deserted roads.
The rebels had taken great pains to dig a tunnel undetected, by using pickaxes and spades under the front line dividing Aleppo, to get under the Carlton hotel where they planted their explosives. Fourteen soldiers died in the massive mushroom-clouded explosion. The blast took place close by Aleppo's medieval citadel, a city landmark once popular with tourists. The elegant hotel was reduced to a pile of rubble.
The rebels dug the 200-metre-long tunnel under the hotel, filling it with locally made explosives comprised of chemical fertilizers weighing about 18 tonnes. The Islamic Front took issue with the officially-stated estimated 14 soldiers having died in the blast; they claim 50 soldiers died, an unverifiable claim.
And back in Homs, after a delay where the fighter evacuation was temporarily suspended when gunmen in northern Syria prevented humanitarian relief trucks from entering blockaded Shia villages as part of the cease-fire agreement, army troops finally managed to enter the city's old quarters. Footage from Homs showed rebels, faces covered with masks, carrying backpacks, boarding green buses toward the north.
Patrolling a nearby street was a policeman in a uniform with a depiction of an eagle and the words "Syria's Assad" emblazoned on it. Odd, that; would it not have been more appropriate for the lend to read: "Assad's Syria"?
"Words cannot describe what has happened here", mournfully said Abdel Nasser Harfoush, a 58-year-old Homs Syrian who lost his livelihood, but not his life.
AP Photo
Syrian government forces inspect damages in Homs,
Syria, Thursday, May 8, 2014.
Carrying their rifles and small bags of
belongings, hundreds of exhausted Syrian rebels withdrew Wednesday from
their last remaining strongholds in the heart of Homs, surrendering to
President Bashar Assad a bloodstained city that was once the center of
the revolt against him.
Labels: Atrocities, Conflict, Islamism, Syria
posted by Pieface | 8:18 PM
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