War Is Boring

Syrian president Bashar Al Assad’s jet fighters and helicopters continue to pound Free Syrian Army rebels in Damascus, Aleppo and other battleground cities, contributing to a death toll reportedly as high as 320 in one town in a single week. Attacks by jet fighters on rebels in Damascus yesterday reportedly killed 60 people.

The embattled regime of Syrian president Bashar Assad has unleashed its air forces against fighters of the rebel Free Syrian Army in the city of Aleppo and other battlegrounds. Government Mi-8 Hip helicopters and MiG-23 and L-39 jets have added gun- and rocket-fire to the army’s indiscriminate artillery barrages.

The crumbling regime of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad reportedly unleashed its air force on Wednesday in what could be the biggest aerial onslaught of the more than year-old civil war. Jet fighters dropped bombs on the northern city of Aleppo, Reuters and the BBC reported.

Since at least February the Syrian government has been using Iranian-built Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to track and target Free Syrian Army rebels in their strongholds, including Homs and Hamah. Now some fresh commercial satellite imagery provides new details about the drone’s possible tactics and capabilities.

If in its final hours Syria’s crumbling government unleashes a chemical barrage — and some analysts certainly think that’s possible — the regime will probably rely on an arsenal of gas- or nerve agent-tipped ballistic missiles purchased from Iran and North Korea.

From Youtube.

Robert Young Pelton on the Syrian war.

by NICK OTTENS Poor Susan Rice was exasperated last week. The American ambassador to the United Nations saw the first step toward international intervention in Syria go up in smoke over the weekend when China and Russia blocked a Security Council resolution that would have urged President Bashar al-Assad to resign. The two veto wielding [...]

Syria is home to the world’s largest urban refugee population; hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have poured in since the 2003 invasion. Barred from joining the Syrian workforce, they attempt to navigate bureaucratic hurdles and find a new place to call home.