Tag Archives: insurgents

Battle of Aleppo ends after years of fighting as rebels agree to withdraw

People walk as they flee deeper into the remaining rebel-held areas of Aleppo, Syria

By Laila Bassam and Stephanie Nebehay

ALEPPO, Syria/GENEVA (Reuters) – Rebel resistance in Syria’s Aleppo ended on Tuesday after years of fighting and months of bitter siege and bombardment that culminated in a bloody collapse of their defenses this week, as insurgents agreed to withdraw in a ceasefire.

Rebel officials said fighting would end on Tuesday evening and insurgents and the civilians who have been trapped in the tiny pocket of territory they hold in Aleppo would leave the city for opposition-held areas of the countryside to the west.

News of the deal, confirmed by Russia’s U.N. envoy, came after the United Nations voiced deep concern about reports it had received of Syrian soldiers and allied Iraqi fighters summarily shooting dead 82 people in recaptured east Aleppo districts. It accused them of “slaughter”.

“My latest information is that they indeed have an arrangement achieved on the ground that the fighters are going to leave the city,” Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin told reporters. It could happen “within hours maybe”, he said.

A surrender or withdrawal of the rebels from Aleppo would mean the end of the rebellion in the city, Syria’s largest until the outbreak of war after mass protests in 2011.

By finally dousing the last embers of resistance burning in Aleppo, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s military coalition of the army, Russian air power and Iran-backed militias will have delivered him his biggest battlefield victory of the war.

However, while the rebels, including groups backed by the United States, Turkey and Gulf monarchies, as well as jihadist groups that the West does not support, will suffer a crushing defeat in Aleppo, the war will be far from over.

“The crushing of Aleppo, the immeasurably terrifying toll on its people, the bloodshed, the wanton slaughter of men, women and children, the destruction – and we are nowhere near the end of this cruel conflict,” U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said in a statement.

Govermental Syrian forces fire into sky as celebrating their victory against rebels in eastern Aleppo, Syria

Govermental Syrian forces fire into sky as celebrating their victory against rebels in eastern Aleppo, Syria December 12,2016. REUTERS/ Omar Sanadiki

“MELTDOWN OF HUMANITY”

The rout of rebels from their ever-shrinking territory in Aleppo has sparked a mass flight of civilians and insurgents in bitter weather, a crisis the United Nations said was a “complete meltdown of humanity”.

“The reports we had are of people being shot in the street trying to flee and shot in their homes,” said U.N. spokesman Rupert Colville. “There could be many more.”

The Syrian army has denied carrying out killings or torture among those captured, and its main ally Russia said on Tuesday rebels had “kept over 100,000 people as human shields”.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon briefed the 15-member U.N. Security Council at 12 p.m. (1700 GMT) at the request of Britain and France. France said it had called for a meeting to focus on possible war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Behind those fleeing was a wasteland of flattened buildings, concrete rubble and bullet-pocked walls, where tens of thousands had lived until recent days under intense bombardment even after medical and rescue services had collapsed.

Colville said the rebel-held area was “a hellish corner” of less than a square kilometer, adding its capture was imminent.

The Syrian army and its allies could declare victory at any moment, a Syrian military source had said, predicting the final fall of the rebel enclave on Tuesday or Wednesday, after insurgent defenses collapsed on Monday.

(Reporting By Laila Bassam in Aleppo, Orhan Coskun in Ankara, Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Tom Miles and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Angus McDowall in Beirut; Editing by Pravin Char and Peter Millership)

Syrian Rebels battle each other north of Aleppo

People walk past rubble of damaged buildings in a rebel-held besieged area in Aleppo, Syria

By Tom Perry

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian insurgents clashed in a town near the Turkish border on Monday as inter-rebel tensions spilled over, playing to President Bashar al-Assad’s advantage with the government tightening its grip on rebel-held eastern Aleppo.

The confrontation in Azaz pitted a prominent Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebel group, the Levant Front, against factions that also fight under the FSA banner and the Islamist Ahrar al-Sham, sources on both sides and a group that reports on the war said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said headquarters and checkpoints held by the Levant Front had been seized in the fighting, which a Levant Front official said had forced the group to withdraw some fighters from a battle with Islamic State in the nearby city of al-Bab.

The fighting in Azaz, some 60 km (35 miles) north of Aleppo, also prompted Turkey, which backs a number of FSA rebel groups, to close the border crossing at Oncupinar. Adjacent to Bab al-Salam in Syria, it is a major conduit for traffic between opposition-held northern Syria and Turkey.

Rebel officials described the fighting as a blow to the opposition in the Aleppo region. Many of the insurgent groups operating in the Azaz area also have a presence in eastern Aleppo, where rebel groups had also clashed on Nov 2.

The Syrian army backed by Russian air strikes and Shi’ite militias including Lebanon’s Hezbollah have been waging a fierce campaign against the insurgents in the city, before the war the country’s most populous.

MAJOR WEAKNESS

Rebel infighting has been a major weakness of the anti-Assad revolt since its earliest days. Rebel factions have been divided by both ideology and local power struggles.

Jihadist groups have crushed less well-armed nationalist factions, while Islamists have also fought each other, notably in the Eastern Ghouta of Damascus this year.

Sources on opposing sides of Monday’s fighting gave different accounts of events.

The Levant Front official described it as an attack on his group by rivals including the Nour al-Din al-Zinki faction,

which also fights under the FSA banner but has coordinated closely with Islamist groups. He called the confrontation a potentially lethal blow to the rebellion.

A source on the other side of the conflict said groups including Ahrar al-Sham and the Zinki group had launched a campaign to “cleanse” northern Syria of groups that were guilty of acting like gangs. A statement declaring the start of the campaign identified targets including the leader of the Levant Front and the head of its security office.

Earlier this month, rebel factions clashed in eastern Aleppo itself. In that clash, the Zinki group and the allied jihadist Jabhat Fateh al-Sham tried to crush the Fastaqim faction, which is part of the FSA.

Fateh al-Sham changed its name from the Nusra Front in July and said it was breaking its formal allegiance to al Qaeda. Officials from Ahrar al-Sham did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The Syrian army and its allies have completely encircled eastern Aleppo this year, and in September launched a major campaign aimed at seizing the insurgent-held areas.

Rebels launched a counter attack last month, aimed at the city’s government-held western districts. But that has failed, with the army and its allies on Saturday recapturing the last piece of territory they had lost.

(Writing by Tom Perry; editing by John Stonestreet)

Thailand avoids linking bloody insurgency to tourist site blasts

Police Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) official inspects the site of a bomb blast in Hua Hin, south of Bangkok, Thailand,

By Amy Sawitta Lefevre and Andrew R.C. Marshall

BANGKOK (Reuters) – Within hours of last week’s deadly bomb and arson attacks in Thailand, police and senior officials publicly ruled out any link to foreign militants and insisted the perpetrators, as yet unidentified, were homegrown.

But they also doubted the involvement of Thailand’s most violent homegrown militants: the Malay-Muslim insurgents fighting a bloody separatist war in the country’s three southernmost provinces, where similar bombings are grimly routine.

The official denial was unsurprising, said security experts. Admitting that southern insurgents could be involved in last week’s attacks would have serious economic and security implications for Thailand.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the wave of bombings on Thursday and Friday that killed four people and wounded dozens, including foreign tourists.

But some security experts have noted that southern insurgent groups have a track record for carrying out coordinated bombing attacks.

Since 2004, a low-intensity but brutal war between government troops and insurgents has killed more than 6,500 people in the southern provinces of Yala, Pattani and Narathiwat that border Malaysia.

Most people there are ethnic Malay Muslims, who for decades have chafed under the rule of Buddhist-dominated governments in faraway Bangkok.

Last week’s attacks had “nothing to do with the southern insurgency,” Colonel Yuthanam Phetmuang, a spokesman for the military’s Internal Security Operations Command (ISOC) told Reuters.

Yuthanam denied the police were too quick to reach this conclusion, insisting it was based on “evidence collected and experience”. He declined to elaborate further.

POLITICAL MOTIVATIONS

Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, also Thailand’s defense minister, told reporters on Monday the attacks were “definitely not an extension” of the southern insurgency, but said the perpetrators “could have been hired from there”.

Security experts told Reuters that southern insurgents should remain the chief suspects, and questioned the government’s political motivations for so hastily ruling them out.

Admitting the possible involvement of insurgents would mean that violence, once largely contained in the south, was “spreading to other parts of the country,” said Rungrawee Chalermsripinyorat, an independent analyst who has written two books on the conflict.

“This could have a potentially huge economic impact,” she said.

If perpetrated by the insurgents, the attacks constituted the biggest and deadliest campaign yet outside their traditional area of operations, she said.

It could also indicate that security operations in the south had “seriously failed,” despite the military taking complete control after seizing power in a 2014 coup, she added.

Rungrawee stressed that the involvement of southern militants in the recent attacks “remains a hypothesis”.

NEW CONSTITUTION

The attacks came days after Thailand voted to accept a new constitution that paves the way for an election in 2017 and, say critics, enshrines the military’s already considerable power.

Thailand’s deputy national police chief on Sunday said the attacks were carried out simultaneously by one group on the orders of one person, but gave no further details.

Police on Monday said they had arrested one man for arson.

Suspicion over the attacks has also fallen on forces loyal to former populist Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra who was toppled in a 2006 coup. His sister, Yingluck, who took power after a winning a general election in 2011, was ousted in a 2014 coup.

His “red shirt” supporters denied they were behind the attacks. Security experts have said the involvement of the group, which is intensely monitored by the military, is highly unlikely.

Most Thais voters accepted the military’s constitution, but those in the three southern provinces overwhelmingly rejected it.

Analyst Rungrawee said this reflected deep local resentment of the Thai military and government.

TOURISTS TARGETED BEFORE

Violent incidents, including roadside bombings and shootings, take place almost daily in the southern border provinces

But they have spiked considerably so far this month, with 88 incidents of violence just in the first 10 days of August in the three southern provinces and neighboring Songkhla province, according to Deep South Watch (DSW), a Pattani-based group which monitors the conflict.

This compared with 32 incidents in all of August 2015, the lowest level of violence for 12 years.

Southern insurgents have targeted tourist sites before. Thirteen people were killed and more than 300 wounded in March 2012 when multiple bombs went off in Yala and Hat Yai, a bustling commercial center north of the three southern provinces popular with Malaysian visitors.

Peace talks between the Thai government and a handful of insurgent groups began in 2013 under the civilian government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, but have stalled since the military overthrew her.

Hardliners from the Barisan Revolusi Nasional (National Revolutionary Front, or BRN) have largely rejected the negotiations.

The BRN is the region’s most powerful insurgent group and says it fighting to establish an independent state.

(Additional reporting by Panarat Thepgumpnata Patpicha Tanakasempipat and Pracha Hariraksapitak.; Editing by Bill Tarrant.)