"Jaish Al-Islam allegedly reached an agreement with the government and will surrender the strategic town of Douma in Eastern Ghouta. Reports appeared amid a series of setbacks by the militants in the region. The Syrian army is now deployed in a striking distance from the town. The situation with the alleged deal will become clear in coming days.
If the agreement is reached, some part of militants from the town will be transfered to the province of Idlib and another part (who wants) will receive a pardon from the Syrian government.
The fall of Douma into hands of the Syrian army will indicate the total collapse of the militants’ defenses in Damascus’ Eastern Ghouta region." South Front
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John Kirby says that defeating the Nusra Front (by whatever name) is not a primary goal of the US. OK. In that context the R+6 is busy cleaning up pockets of resistance all over western Syria. The method seems to be to apply enough pressure on the surrounded forces to convince the defenders of the hopelessness of their position and then arrange a surrender and transport to Idlib Province west of Aleppo City for them and any civilians who want to go with them. There have been quite a few examples of this so far.
A major side benefit of this process is the re-commitment of these jihadi forces to combat in places like the western edge of the Aleppo encirclement and in northern Hama Province where the jihadis captured several villages last week.
These combats are a great opportunity to render these jihadis into martyrs. Why? It is because you know where they are when they are fighting you.
pl
https://southfront.org/militants-considering-to-surrender-in-eastern-ghouta-largest-town/
sir,
also it might be easier to bomb them once they are around Aleppo (no “human shield” for the media to cry).
Completely unrelated, but I do believe events in Kirkuk axis are highly more significant than MSM currently making them out to be. There are very credible reports that ISIS controls over half of the city of 750K after a 3 hour blitz commenced 12 hrs ago, ongoing US airstrikes which resulted in one incident a couple hours ago where 20+ shiite women and dozens more injured in mistaken bombing of funeral procession. Peshmerga will not let PMU enter. ISIS have captured key points of city, freed hundreds of prisoners, and reports of mass abductions and murders of Turkmen Shiites. Very credible reports of the local Kirkuk kurds and arabs being instrumental as sleeper cells to accomplish the infiltration of the city during the early morning hours without sounding of alarm.Generally disastrous situation all around, reminds of summer 2014. ISIS did this with not more than 150-200 troops. IMO this throws wrench in mosul op
Iranian media reports 4 Iranian engineers working on Kirkuk power plant were killed and three injured in an ISIS attack on the plant.
The Daesh infiltration into Kirkuk apparently came from Hawija, which should have been liberated before Mosul IMHO.
There are conflicting reports on current status in Kirkuk.
http://rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/21102016
Plant in question, located far NW of Kirkuk proper, was attacked in the first 2-3 hrs simultaneous to main offensive , to cut off Kirkuk from Erbil. Reinforcements coming from erbil then found themselves under withering VBIED ambush from IS occupying the plant environs/road. Much clearer picture emerging about what’s going on on ground by the hour, maps from multi different sources make clear that IS still holding roughly half of urban Kirkuk, with full freedom to reinforce. Baghdad bobesque reporting from official pesh and ISF and complete unquestioning MSM willingness to retransmit unfiltered is, sadly, no longer a surprise to me