ISIS/ISIL conflict in Syria/Iraq (No OpEd, No Politics)

according to The Wall Street Journal
U.N. Was Warned of Airstrikes Before Ill-Fated Convoy Left
‘Airstrikes are not a reason to stop the convoy,’ U.N. official wrote after opposition warned of danger from Syrian government

United Nations officials went ahead with an ill-fated aid delivery to a rebel-held town in northern Syria Monday despite warnings by their own staff and Western-backed rebels that the area wasn’t safe, according to communications seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Airstrikes Monday night on the town of Urem al-Kubra just outside the city of Aleppo destroyed 18 of the 31 trucks in the convoy and
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accompanying them. The U.S. on Tuesday
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, the Syrian regime’s key international ally.

Monday’s convoy to Urem al-Kubra and another that went to a rebel-held town in central Homs province were
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during the weeklong cease-fire. Western officials hailed the trucks’ arrival in the town as proof of the deal’s potential success—until they were hit
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On Sunday, Syrian opposition members warned U.N. officials against deliveries to the rebel-held side of Aleppo, reporting the government was violating the cease-fire in and around the city, noting Urem al-Kubra. A U.N. official acknowledged the violations in a response.

“The airstrikes are not a reason to stop the convoy,” an official from the U.N. Special Envoy to Syria’s office replied on Sunday, conveying what the official said was the position of a representative of the U.N. Department of Political Affairs and suggesting that some people around the special envoy disagreed with that stance.

The attacks were part of a wave of regime airstrikes on Aleppo province that began immediately after the Damascus government announced Monday evening that the one-week truce brokered by the U.S. and Russia had expired.

The exchange of messages revealed divisions between Damascus-based U.N. agencies over the risk of aid delivery to Aleppo province, as well as a degree of distrust of the Syrian government.

The messages show U.N. officials decided to proceed even though the Syrian regime was violating the cease-fire—violations U.N. officials have been reticent to acknowledge publicly even as they did so in private messages.

A U.N. official said Tuesday that the convoy came from the government-held side of the divided city of Aleppo and a day earlier officials said the regime had approved it, making the airstrike on the aid trucks all the more perplexing.

“The safety of convoys traveling through government areas is the responsibility of the government,” a second U.N. official, based in Damascus, wrote to a senior opposition member in a separate exchange of messages on Sunday. The official was speaking of rebel-held areas in and around Aleppo city, including Urem al-Kubra. “If [rebels] permit entrance, we will have all the sufficient guarantees to stop bombing from the government side.”

Moscow on Tuesday denied that it or the Syrian air force had struck the convoy in Urem al-Kubra, which was a joint mission of the U.N. and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

After the truce brought days of relative calm, the Syrian government and its Russian allies restarted airstrikes on Aleppo on Sunday, angered by errant airstrikes on the Syrian military by the U.S.-led coalition in Deir Ezzour the previous day.

Washington has cast the delivery of humanitarian aid to rebel-held areas—specifically some 300,000 people in the besieged rebel-held side of Aleppo city—as one of the first goals of the cease-fire deal, to be followed by military cooperation with Moscow to take on extremist groups such as Islamic State and the Syrian Conquest Front.

The Syrian government has cut off supplies to rebel-held areas, with staples such as flour and medicine unavailable or prohibitively expensive.

Aleppo was Syria’s largest city and its economic heartland before the conflict, but has seen some of the worst fighting between rebels and government forces in a battle observers say will determine the outcome of the war.

The U.N. has been criticized in the past for delivering most of its humanitarian aid to government-controlled areas while regime forces often hamper deliveries to opposition territory, sometimes blocking staples such as flour. Members of the opposition said U.N. officials said they were eager to deliver aid to Aleppo to rebuff these criticisms.

A representative of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and a spokeswoman for the office of U.N. Special Envoy to Syria, Staffan de Mistura, said they don’t comment on leaked staff correspondence.

Washington had hoped a successful truce could clinch a larger political deal to end the Syrian war, now in its sixth year with some 400,000 dead, according to U.N. estimates.
source:
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(I originally noticed at gazeta.ru:
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)
 

SampanViking

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Is that all the 'evidence' people have?

Screw the secondaries, what about the primary? Just what evidence does anyone have pointing this as Russia or Syria's doing?

Seems like everyone is taking it as given that this was an air strike with zero evidence, other than unverifiable claims by US officials unwilling to give their names.

You'd think if the US had any smoking gun linking this attack conclusively to Russia or Syria, they couldn't show the world fast enough.

The 'eye witness' accounts of the attack are all over the place, and actually contradicts the US government version of events.

The US is claiming two Russian Su24s in the skies in the area at the time of the attack were responsible, and that the attack was too 'sophisticated' to be the Syrian government. But the news are filled with clips of people claiming to have seen helicopters and barrel bombs (in the pitch black), with some even claiming to be giving a blow by blow of conversations between Syrian helicopter pilots and ground control. :rolleyes:

Also, for all the people lining up to show video of the aftermath, I have seen no video evidence of the actual moment the convoy was hit. Odd given how long these same witnesses are claiming the attack went on for.

I remember thinking at the time this story first broke that the timing of this attack was pretty serendipitous for the US, helping to entirely shift the focus and blame from their own oh so recent and damning air strike calamity.

This is shaping up to be a textbook bait and switch false flag operation, with the US government and western media going out of their way to look past all the glaring holes and inconsistencies so they can 'fall' for it.

I have to say; looking at the aftermath pictures, that they tally with the Russian statement, which says there is no sign of missile strikes or bomb craters and that the chassis of the lorries seem remarkably intact and simply that they have been burnt.
 

SampanViking

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going on with my post right above (I ate venison goulash in the meantime :)
the Russian Ministry of Defense posted this very short vid:
purporting to show Rebels' car towing a mortar while driving by that convoy; world wonders what's happened after that

by the way the best pro-Kremlin conjecture I've read so far is in the discussion under the related blog by "Cassad"
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where a debater said the UN had sold the aid in black market, and torched the convoy to cover it up ROFL
 

SampanViking

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Following the Russian observation of lack craters, the US has responded by belatedly producing a picture of a crater.

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dpbsdi.jpg

dpbsdi.jpg


Am I alone in being surprised that a crater can be created without corresponding blast, shrapnel and heat damage? Some of the boxes on the crater edge seem barely disturbed!
 

FORBIN

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French guns get ready :cool:

The artillery battery supplied by France to the Iraqi army has been established north of Mosul, said the French president at the UN.

French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday from the UN headquarters in New York that the artillery battery supplied by France to the Iraqi army had been established north of Mosul, "ready to serve for the reconquest" from the city.

"Even today, the artillery battery was set up north of Mosul and is ready to serve for the reconquest of Mosul", held since 2014 by the Islamic State group (EI), said the head of french State at a press conference on the sidelines of the General Assembly of the UN.

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seeing
French guns get ready :cool:

and
Dunford Says Mosul Operation Could Begin in October
Iraqi security forces will be ready to retake the city of Mosul by early October, America’s top general asserted Wednesday.

Gen. Joe Dunford, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an audience at the Air Force Association conference here that the Pentagon is now confident that the operation can begin next month.

“We assessed today the Iraqis will have, in early October, all the forces marshaled, trained, fielded and equipped that are necessary for operations in Mosul,” Dunford said.

However, the actual launch of the operation may not come immediately, with Dunford noting that the decision “is really just a function of the political decision of Prime Minister [Haider al-Abadi] and we will be in position to provide whatever support, whatever reinforcement those forces need in order to be successful.”

The mission to retake Mosul, the last major urban center controlled by the Islamic State group, has been long brewing, with Pentagon officials indicating it could begin as far back as last December.

Dunford praised the work of forces in Syria operating against ISIL, noting that there are now 30,000 Syrian Democratic Forces, with 14,000 Arabs among them, fighting on the ground.

“Last year at this time we probably had a few hundred vetted Syrian opposition forces on the ground we were supporting, so there has been significant growth,” Dunford said. And the Pentagon is “trying to grow more, even as we balance Turkish concerns for our support.”

While not directly addressing reports that Russian planes bombed a UN aid convoy this week, Dunford hinted at it, noting “recent events have complicated the situation, and I suspect many in this room, the [Air Force] chief included, will be working hard at that in the coming days.”
in DefenseNews
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I recalled
Sep 7, 2016
joking aside, I'll repeat here the conjecture I read in Russian Internet ... at that point you may skip the rest of this post ... according to that conjecture, Iraq have already amassed 150 thousand Fighters (Army, and also Thugs from
May 29, 2016

... and of course nobody believes me ...
Special Report: Massacre reports show U.S. inability to curb Iraq militias just link now, you may consider whether to read the content:
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) around Mosul, but the attack will take place later so that Mosul "happened" to be taken shortly before the US Presidential Elections ... time will tell
 
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Sep 2, 2016
there had been a counter-strike, just neither side convinced me of its outcome (the usual :) taken/retaken Tweets), so I put two blue question marks below: "Inskandariyah" and "Marus" (haven't heard about changes elsewhere), and will update ...:
Dlb89.jpg


(the rest of the description of this map is of course in https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/is...o-oped-no-politics.t6913/page-421#post-413187)
as I can see, history has a tendency to repeat itself :)

21 September 2016 19:57 Iranians proudly announced

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"The Syrian army and popular forces began large-scale operations in the Northern parts of Hama to drive terrorists out of the town of Maardas, near the important fortified village of Ma’an. ..." etc. in
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("Maardas" is of course "Marus" above)
 
until now I didn't know Rebels had not been pushed THAT far out from southern (outskirts of) Aleppo after they lost the Artillery Base EDIT let me see ... Sep 7, 2016 https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/isis-isil-conflict-in-syria-iraq-no-oped-no-politics.t6913/page-425#post-414043

LOL yes I happened to notice the ceasefire in the meantime, anyway this map from
Aug 2, 2016
is still usable: Government hasn't regained (in middle-top) all "1070 Appartments" yet, isn't in Musrifah nor Al-Hikma (I've read there were fights recently somewhere in between those places) ... let's wait and see
 
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