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pampango

(24,692 posts)
Wed Sep 19, 2012, 01:39 PM Sep 2012

Heavy fighting rages in Damascus suburb

Source: BBC


A pillar of black smoke rose into the sky above the capital on Wednesday

There has been further heavy fighting in the Syrian capital, Damascus, and the northern city of Aleppo.

Activists said government forces were closing in on Hajar al-Aswad, a southern suburb of Damascus, and the situation for residents was desperate. They posted video footage online which they said showed helicopter gunships firing rockets, also the bodies of some of the more than 20 people they said had been killed.

The reports of violence came as Amnesty International said indiscriminate air attacks and artillery strikes by Syrian government forces are killing, maiming, and terrorising civilians in in the Idlib, Jabal al-Zawiya and north Hama regions.

"They are using in equal measure air-delivered, large, old, Soviet-era unguided bombs - free-fall bombs - the opposite of smart bombs," she said. "They are dropped over an area. There's no way you can target them at a specific target or specific building."

Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19645269



Wonder is Assad is running low on modern bombs and just has old-fashioned free-fall bombs left or if he is saving the precision weapons for engagements with armed opposition and using the old bombs on cities and neighborhoods.

Either way he will be in the market to buy replacements sooner rather than later.
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Heavy fighting rages in Damascus suburb (Original Post) pampango Sep 2012 OP
The civil war settles into a bloody stalemate. Comrade Grumpy Sep 2012 #1
I wonder if Riverbend and her family are OK. HooptieWagon Sep 2012 #2
 

Comrade Grumpy

(13,184 posts)
1. The civil war settles into a bloody stalemate.
Wed Sep 19, 2012, 02:14 PM
Sep 2012

This could go on for years, barring some sort of nonlinear regime collapse. Maybe is Assad were assassinated, the regime would crumble, but I'm not even certain of that.

It's also hard to imagine any sort of peace settlement, though war will not end without one.

 

HooptieWagon

(17,064 posts)
2. I wonder if Riverbend and her family are OK.
Wed Sep 19, 2012, 03:16 PM
Sep 2012

Her last blog entry was 5 years ago, when they had settled in Syria as refugees. Apparently her publishers haven't heard word since then either.

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