With the battle for Eastern Ghouta effectively over, the Syrian government is shifting its focus eastward, into the Qalamoun mountains, where small numbers of rebels remain about 40 km away from the capital city, in the area not far from the Lebanese border.
Syrian and Russian forces issued a public ultimatum on Tuesday over the area, saying that the rebels need to either accept state rule or leave. The rebels aren’t very public, so written ultimatums were delivered to local civilian leaders to pass on.
Most of the rebels in the Qalamoun mountains already evacuated in previous deals with the government. Such deals saw rebels sent to Idlib Province, and rebels let Shi’ite civilians out of villages in Idlib.
It’s not clear how much of these groups are even left in the mountains, but as the last even nominally rebel-held area anywhere near Damascus, resolving the situation would underscore that the Assad government has a secure handle on their heartland.
Good news. Great to see the Syrian government take control again.
What’s “great” about a murderous dictator being in control? You a big fan of mass executions and cluster bombs, Dennis?
Feb 11, 2017 – Amnesty International says as many as 13000 opponents of Bashar Assad have been hanged outside Damascus.
Nov 30, 2017 – Amnesty International says the Syrian government has used internationally banned cluster munitions in attacks on the besieged rebel-held suburb of Damascus, accusing it of committing war crimes on an epic scale.
And before you accuse Amnesty International of being stooges, they issued reports criticizing rebel factions as well (accusing them of such things as torture and indiscriminate shelling of civilians). You can go look it up for yourself. In fact, the rebel groups were complaining about Amnesty’s reports.
It’s called balance, something this site doesn’t really understand.
Should rename the site to WhateverPutinWants.com
I mean, Catalan rebels are heroes (because Russia supports them), but Syrian rebels are one and all devils (because Russia opposes them).
You guys are transparent, you know?
Now think carefully……….. Just how many Syrian Refugees were there before the United States and Saudi Arabia started to fund, Terrorist groups in Syria, and remember that the majority of the Al Nusra Front (AKA Al Qaeda in Iraq)
and its child ISIS were Wahhibi Foreign fighters 30 thousand or more of them. That is how you discern what was actually happening on the ground in Syria before the fighting. Now those figures for Syrian Refugees were very low, before the US funded Regime change actions, whilst during the US funded era well over 5 million left. It seems they were not running from Assad, at all! But US funded Terrorists who raped burned and pillaged, took young girls into sexual slavery and servitude, destroyed 2000 year old Christian churches (now think carefully there as well there were two thousand year old Christian churches hence the Syrians and the Preceding Ottomans did not destroy those churches, the US funded Al Nusra front however made that one of their first objectives. US funded the blowing up of Christian Churches and the rape and killing of Christian men women and children! So again who is the evil one here!
“It’s called balance, something this site doesn’t really understand.”
Actually, this site understands it perfectly. You won’t find any endorsement of the Assad regime, or the rebels, or the Russians, or the US “coalition” here. All you’ll find is opposition to war.
In fact, a good number of the comments on Syria here are complaints that Antiwar.com doesn’t pretend that Assad is Syria’s version of Jimmy Stewart in “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.”
Balance for you means supporting head choppers….and probably the gov’t of Israel too.
Are they going to let the embedded CIA/Mossad operatives leave too?
It is good to make a bridge of gold for a flying enemy
I think you meant “fleeing”, but I totally agree with you. Saves a lot of unnecessary civilian casualties.
It’s an old saying, to fly used to mean to flee.