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Syrian forces retake Palmyra in major victory over IS

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Quote: "IS lost at least 400 fighters in the battle for the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. On the government side, 188 troops and militiamen were killed.“That’s the heaviest losses that IS has sustained in a single battle since its creation” in 2013, the director of the Britain-based monitoring group, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP. “It is a symbolic defeat for IS comparable with that in Kobane,” a town on the Turkish border where Kurdish fighters held out against a months-long siege by IS in 2014-15, he added.

Great if this is true, but everything these Observatory people say is biased rubbish, according to the regular JT gang, so I guess this news too is sadly not true.

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@nandakandamanda

everything these Observatory people say is biased rubbish, according to the regular JT gang, so I guess this news too is sadly not true.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is run by one single Syrian dissident from his two bedroom flat in the UK, not 'people'. His regular day job is working as a shop assistant in a clothing store. Whatever you think about him or his sources, it's difficult to explain why someone who just repeats hearsay information from Syria without actually being there on the ground has been given such a disproportionate amount of media attention. I think the media does their audience a huge disservice by failing to properly explain this. At first I also thought is was a large, legitimate and objective organisation like 'Human Rights Watch'. It's not.

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“A handful of IS fighters are refusing to leave the city and seem to want to fight on to the bitter end,” Abdel Rahman said."

They have a death wish. Hopefully it will be granted.

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M3M3:

" The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is run by one single Syrian dissident from his two bedroom flat in the UK, not 'people'. His regular day job is working as a shop assistant in a clothing store. Whatever you think about him or his sources, it's difficult to explain why someone who just repeats hearsay information from Syria without actually being there on the ground has been given such a disproportionate amount of media attention. I think the media does their audience a huge disservice by failing to properly explain this. "

Well, but he gave himself a really really big sounding name, plus he is anti-Assad.... that seals the deal for the mainsteam media quacks, doesn´t it.

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M3M3M3, all of what you say is common knowledge and has been posted on JT many times. He collects information from a network of 'regular' sources on the ground inside Syria, so in that sense I used the word 'people'.

I do not know if he also monitors Syrian government news outlets, but I wouldn't be surprised. He seems to make an effort to get the overall picture. Most intelligent readers will use whatever information is out there and come to their own conclusions. Always better to spread your antennae, I reckon.

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Nandakamanda:

" I do not know if he also monitors Syrian government news outlets, but I wouldn't be surprised. He seems to make an effort to get the overall picture "

He is a Sunni and virulently opposed to the Alevite Assad government. If you follow his biased reports, you can see that clearly.

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Thanks for that Willi. No, I do not follow him religiously or exclusively.

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Russian intervention works. They made ISIS weaker.

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Whatever happened to the "Russia isn't bombing" ISIS theory?

They weren't, in a significant non-token way, at the time. These things are moment-dependent.

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They weren't, in a significant non-token way, at the time

It was obvious strategy - first take control over closest viable points and then go for more distant targets. It is not reasonable to go for base D without securing base A..

And only US / NATO can see the difference between ISIS and a bunch of other groups of similar psychos. For Russians they are all different pieces of the same s...t.

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They weren't, in a significant non-token way, at the time

It was obvious strategy - first take control over closest viable points and then go for more distant targets. It is not reasonable to go for base D without securing base A..

It is a strategy. But that still means people were correct about Russia at the time.

And only US / NATO can see the difference between ISIS and a bunch of other groups of similar psychos. For Russians they are all different pieces of the same s...t.

But that still doesn't allow Russia to make up their own terms. Call 'em "all terrorists" if they like; just don't call ISIS what's not ISIS, like what they were doing. That's like calling Sunnis as Shiites just because they're all Muslims.

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Hopefully the Russians will have plenty of napalm left to drop on the retreating ISIS cowards.

Seems they couldn't even blow up the "idolatrous" ruins very effectively.

ISIS doesn't seem to be so tough when their opponents have weapons to defend themselves.

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