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

now, before I try to look at Palmyra situation: it's News of the Hour

at gazeta.ru right now (that's how I noticed moments ago), links to
Sun Dec 11, 2016 | 10:54am EST
Kurdish militants claim responsibility for Istanbul attack that killed 38

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Jura said:

now, before I try to look at Palmyra situation: it's News of the Hour

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at gazeta.ru right now (that's how I noticed moments ago), links to
Sun Dec 11, 2016 | 10:54am EST
Kurdish militants claim responsibility for Istanbul attack that killed 38

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Click to expand...

Time to go find Rambo, Steven Segal, and John Claude Vandame! what a joke, this is beyond disgusting,,,,,,

Air Force Brat said:

Time to go find Rambo, Steven Segal, and John Claude Vandame! what a joke, this is beyond disgusting,,,,,,

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take it easy bro

inside the blog by "Cassad"

there're pictures of ISIL in Palmyra, including, alas! a "POW"

(by the way many debaters there

now spinning "Palmyra is unimportant, Aleppo is important" who I guess could be the same debaters who yesterday in the morning called a fall of Palmyra to be an impossibility, and today in the morning praised how ISIL had been stopped by Russian Air Force)

Jura said:

... I try to look at Palmyra situation: ...

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... using the same map from Today at 9:12 AM

Jura said:

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and after going over several sources:
what reportedly happened today was a concerted attack of about fours thousand ISILs in total, from north ("1": reached "Al-Amiriya" suburb(?) first, and the town next) and from east, from the area of "Grain Silos" Government had lost yesterday ("2"):

(of course there could be supporting attacks elsewhere)

anyway ... what's next??

Jura said:

... what's next??

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looking from my comfortable armchair, and assuming the fresh "miladvisor" map shows the current situation
EDIT fixing the map now:

• Government should hold up in
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  (the place marked above) area to wait for reinforcements to mount a counter-strike ASAP (tomorrow), before checkpoints can be prepared for defense etc.;
• playing Tango now: ISIL should rush it down "32" road to directly threaten the next major point (tonight)
  

  Jura said:

  ... "Tiyas Airbase" below (it's about ten miles from

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  ):
  

  

  
  
  ...

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now I'll wait

Nov 23, 2016

Jura said:

... the importance is in taking accesses to Al-Bab, which is fortified:
and while "bulwark" like that shown in the recent picture of Al-Bab:

would be a problem for Light Infantry (=Rebels), it wouldn't last long if Turks pulled the artillery and just corrected fire ...

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... and now you can see what presumably a Leopard 2 does the "bulwark" at 02:02 in

Today at 5:55 PM

Jura said:

...
what reportedly happened today was a concerted attack of about fours thousand ISILs in total, from north ("1": reached "Al-Amiriya" suburb(?) first, and the town next) and from east, from the area of "Grain Silos" Government had lost yesterday ("2"):

...

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... and looking from the other side now, it seems defenders/"defenders" of Palmyra actually fled today (based on the video of the booty in the link below ... could be a fake but the collapse was so quick that, ehm, it probably isn't a fake):





Tanks and other armored vehicles captured in .

delft said:

I was just writing that I have not seen this mentioned by other news outlets, suggesting that Leith Fadel is an honest writer, when I found:

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,
Russian air strikes 'force IS out of Palmyra'
which was then five minutes old.
...

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... actually it seems Russian Air Force has been absent over Palmyra this weekend: the sky is clear in the vid inside https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/is...o-oped-no-politics.t6913/page-488#post-428217 and if nothing else, they should've destroyed ISIL's booty (in that vid, the armor appears to be still in/close to the base)

This always seems to be the issue for all sides - you move forces to concentrate in one area and you leave others vulnerable to a counterstrike. The SAA have been more vulnerable than the other sides due to having so many pockets to surround.

Fortunately we have seen this problem improve with the fall of the West Ghouta and the drastic shrinking of the East.
The most critical change has to be Aleppo where the man power needed to enforce the Ring Doughnut front lines must have been exhaustive. Finishing the Aleppo operation must be the initial objective, but even now; with the terrorists restricted to a few small districts, their must be thousands, maybe even tens of thousands of SAA soldiers that are now freed up for other fronts already.

Re Palmyra, should the SAA go back and tack on the ISIS task force head first or should they play the same game and attack another ISIS front and force ISIS to redeploy to protect other valuable assets.
The ISIS territory adjacent to the HAMA to Aleppo supply road certainly suggests itself....

Yesterday at 7:33 PM

Jura said:

looking from my comfortable armchair, and assuming the fresh "miladvisor" map shows the current situation

(it's

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)
​

EDIT fixing the map now:

• Government should hold up in
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  (the place marked above) area to wait for reinforcements to mount a counter-strike ASAP (tomorrow), before checkpoints can be prepared for defense etc.;
• playing Tango now: ISIL should rush it down "32" road to directly threaten the next major point (tonight)

now I'll wait

Click to expand...

just quickly based on what I read in Russian Internet now

(by the way contains some Government armor from https://www.sinodefenceforum.com/is...o-oped-no-politics.t6913/page-488#post-428217 identified)


Government didn't try to regroup or nothing in the western outskirts of Palmyra (the first point in the above post), instead flew off the helicopters out of "Tiyan Airbase" ... if I'm not mistaken, ISIL has been attacking for three days now, so it can go on for one more day

(there's no "strategic reserves", or "rear", involved, is it? from what I've seen before in this conflict: they just "rotate" what they brought to the area so will run out of ammo/resources at one point, on the fifth day or so ... is my amateurish view)

which would be today ...
from Government point of view: reinforcements are on the way (EDIT by my guess is just to pluck the hole, this week)