According to US Central Command (Centcom), US warplanes attacked a major east-west highway in Syria today, to prevent a Red Crescent-led evacuation program which was taking ISIS fighters and civilians out of the Syria-Lebanon border area to Deir Ezzor under a ceasefire deal.
After ISIS lost most of its territory in the border region, they negotiated an evacuation deal with the militaries involved. The US insists that it was not a party to the deal, and felt justified attacking the highway to stop the convoy as a result.
The buses are said to contain 308 militantts and 331 civilians. The US insists that the convoy wasn’t directly attacked because of the number of women and children inside, but that they do insist on all of the militants being killed instead of delivered to Deir Ezzor.
On the other hand, the convoy is now effectively stuck smack in the middle of Syria, with no easy way to move on to their intended destination. Centcom spokesman Col. Ryan Dillon insisted the convoy is still being monitored, and that the US would not rule out attacking the buses in the future if they believe it’s appropriate to do so.
Col. Dillon went on to slam Russia, who appears wholly uninvolved with this whole evacuation process. He said the fact that Russia didn’t actively prevent the convoy from leaving proved they aren’t serious about fighting ISIS.
We’re just all on board for attacking people who can’t truly defend themselves. A 50/50 mix of militants and fighters leaves an awful lot of room for ‘targeting errors’ and ‘collateral damage’. And under the auspices of the Red Crescent, no less. Good work, team. I don’t for one minute support Daesh or its ideals, but we need to think very carefully about what we do with such a high-visibility target with so many civilians at ground zero.
With US warplanes routinely violating Syria airspace without permission, that is an act of war which the international community should condemn.
The ISIS militants are Psychopathic, death-worshipping, religious extremist monsters. Utter extermination is the only answer to their diseased inhumanity. They were exuberant in the beginning when they were winning and beheading and torturing and exterminating. Now that their fate is defeat and death, their love of martyrdom seems to have faded. So the Cowardly scum are traveling with their own families as human shields. They need to be told — perhaps leaflets dropped from the air — that martyrdom is on its way for them, and if they don’t want martyrdom for their families, their wives and children, they should walk out into the desert and leave their widows-and-orphans-to-be to return to peaceful Syria under the control of the Assad government. The alternative is to discover that using your own family as human shields is profoundly cowardly and will not save you or them. If they choose to employ that tactic, they will all be exterminated mercilessly. Just as they, in their rise, dealt mercilessly with their victims.
What a contemptuous lot of thugs America has devolved into. Your group lunacy is a creed of absurdity all its own and which the rest of the world’s peoples will soon turn its backs on. The sooner the better.
Damn straight.
That’s an awfully long way of saying “I’m not anti-war, just against some wars that I happen to not like.”
If they’re in the middle of the desert in an exposed and indefensible position, it should be an easy matter to rapidly assemble a surrounding force and pick off the militants with sniper fire while avoiding “civilian” casualties. These guys are toast. They have a choice: surrender to the tender mercies of the US or Assad government, or be obliterated by the United States Air Force.
As it should be.