State of Alert in Southern Syria After Targeting Russian Faction

Opposition fighters walking in Daraa countryside July 10, 2018. (Reuters)
Opposition fighters walking in Daraa countryside July 10, 2018. (Reuters)
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State of Alert in Southern Syria After Targeting Russian Faction

Opposition fighters walking in Daraa countryside July 10, 2018. (Reuters)
Opposition fighters walking in Daraa countryside July 10, 2018. (Reuters)

The Russian-backed “Fifth Corps” have carried out an inspection campaign after some of the Corps’ members were targeted in Busra.

As crimes and assassinations continue in Southern Syria, Busra – which is the stronghold of the Fifth Corps – witnessed the first assassination attempt of a prominent leader last Saturday, Sep. 18. An explosive device blasted in a neighborhood in Busra, targeting a military vehicle carrying Ali Bash and Qasim al-Miqdad, two leaders of the Fifth Corps group.

Both were wounded and transferred to a hospital in Busra to receive treatment.

Sources close to the matter revealed that the Fifth Corps conducted an inspection campaign hours after the blast, raided several houses in the targeted region, and arrested some of the individuals involved.

Further, a leader from the Fifth Corps was a target of a failed assassination attempt, as someone tryied to shoot him while passing on the road linking Giza and Elemtaih in the east of Daraa.

Adham al-Karad, former leader of an opposition faction in Daraa, threatened earlier to ‘escalate’ in Daraa if the Syrian army refused to withdraw from the zones which its soldiers accessed following the settlement.

Karad also demanded the withdrawal of local groups in Daraa that are working for the security bodies, calling on the negotiating parties and Russia to implement the settlement agreement agreed upon in mid-2018.

The former leader at Al-Bunyan Al-Marsous Operation in Daraa denounced the Syrian regime's recruitment of Daraa tribesmen tand getting them involved in clashes with the city's residents in order to sow discord among tribes.

The Syrian regime provided the local groups with weapons, tanks, and cannons, he added.



Putin Denies Russian Defeat in Syria, Says He Plans to Meet Assad

Russian President Vladimir Putin holds his annual end-of-year press conference in Moscow on December 19, 2024. (Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / AFP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin holds his annual end-of-year press conference in Moscow on December 19, 2024. (Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / AFP)
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Putin Denies Russian Defeat in Syria, Says He Plans to Meet Assad

Russian President Vladimir Putin holds his annual end-of-year press conference in Moscow on December 19, 2024. (Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / AFP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin holds his annual end-of-year press conference in Moscow on December 19, 2024. (Photo by Alexander NEMENOV / AFP)

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia had not been defeated in Syria and that Moscow had made proposals to the new rulers in Damascus to maintain Russia's military bases there.
In his first public comments on the subject, Putin said he had not yet met former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad since was overthrown and forced to flee to Moscow earlier this month, but that he planned to do so.
In response to a question on the subject from a US journalist, Putin said he would ask Assad about the fate of US reporter Austin Tice, who is missing in Syria, and was ready to ask Syria's new rulers about Tice's whereabouts too.
"I will tell you frankly, I have not yet seen President Assad since he came to Moscow. But I plan to do so. I will definitely talk to him," said Putin.
He said most people in Syria with whom Russia had been in contact about the future of its two main military bases in Syria were supportive of them staying, but that talks were ongoing, Reuters said.
Russia, which intervened in Syria in 2015 and turned the tide of the civil war there in Assad's favor, had also told other countries that they could use its airbase and naval base to bring in humanitarian aid for Syria, he said.
"You want to portray everything that is happening in Syria as some kind of failure, a defeat for Russia. I assure you, it is not. And I'll tell you why. We came to Syria 10 years ago to prevent a terrorist enclave from being created there," said Putin.
"On the whole, we have achieved our goal. It is not for nothing that today many European countries and the United States want to establish relations with them (Syria's new rulers). If they are terrorist organizations, why are you (the West) going there? So that means they have changed."