By R. Jazaeri
Source: SANA
Sweida – Army units continued to advance in the depth of the rocky cliffs in the area
of al-Safa hills in Sweida eastern Badyia (desert) after violent clashes with Daesh (ISIS) terrorists.

SANA reporter in Sweida said that army units, in cooperation with the supporting forces, advanced over an area of 1 km in the area of al-Safa hills, establishing control over strategic areas and many caves used by Daesh terrorists as fortified positions.

The reporter added that the new advancement came after violent clashes between army units backed by the supporting forces and terrorists, as scores of terrorists were killed and others were injured while the remnants fled away.

The reporter indicated that the army air force and artillery conducted precision bombardments against positions, dens and fortifications of Daesh terrorists in the depth of the rocky cliffs, inflicting heavy losses upon them amid a state of collapse among their ranks after destroying their defense lines and depriving them of their water resources.

By Caitlin Johnston
Source: Medium
UN Ambassador and Clairvoyant Prognosticator of the Transmundane Nikki Haley has foreseen that, if there are any future chemical weapons attacks in the Syrian province of Idlib, it will most definitely be the Syrian government that is responsible and not the multiple terrorist factions in the area.

“If they want to continue to go the route of taking over Syria, they can do that,” said Nikki Haley at a UN press conference today, without explaining how a nation’s only recognized government can ‘take over’ the country it governs. “But they cannot do it with chemical weapons. They can’t do it assaulting their people. And we’re not gonna fall for it. If there are chemical weapons that are used, we know exactly who’s gonna use them.”

Haley was referring to the Syrian government’s impending push to complete its military campaign of recapturing its land from the terrorist factions and militias who, with extensive help from the US and its allies, have been holding communities hostage in a failed attempt to take over Syria. Her supernatural prophecy is just the latest in an increasingly bizarre string of claims being advanced by political figures and establishment media that the Assad government is planning to use chemical weapons to complete that campaign in Idlib.

Their narrative is that the Russian government’s warnings of a plot by the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist factions occupying the region to stage a chemical weapons attack and frame the Syrian government for it are actually just a preemptive “smoke screen” to allow them to get away with committing war crimes. When Haley said “we’re not gonna fall for it,” this is the ‘it’ she was referring to.

So let’s unpack that a bit. I’m going to propose two different possibilities to you, and you decide for yourself which one is the more likely event to occur in the future:

Possibility 1: The actual, literal terrorist factions occupying Idlib are on the cusp of defeat with nowhere to escape to. They know for a fact that the US and its allies have launched repeated attacks on the Syrian government following chemical weapons allegations without first waiting for an investigation into those allegations. They also know for a fact that multiple high level officials in the western alliance have stated they will carry out aggressive attacks against the Syrian government in retaliation for any perceived chemical weapons attacks, and, thanks to the public prognostications from Madame Haley’s crystal ball, they also know that the Syrian government has already been assigned blame for any such attack in advance. Knowing all of these things, with their backs against the wall with the absolute certainty that getting the western military alliance on their side is their last and only chance, they get their hands on some chemical weapons and kill some of the civilians they’ve captured.

Possibility 2: On the cusp of victory, the Assad government decides to do the one thing that risks a US-led regime change military intervention in order to accomplish the crucial strategic masterstroke of killing a few kids with chlorine or sarin in front of a bunch of White Helmets cameras.

While you are weighing those two options, consider for a moment the fact that the US and its allies have an extensive history of attempting to control who governs Syria, and indeed plotted to create a violent uprising exactly as it occurred in 2011. Not after the violence had already started, but years in advance.

This is not my opinion, and it is not a conspiracy theory. It is a known fact that you can verify for yourself:

Here is a 2006 WikiLeaks cable in which the US government is seen exploring possible factions which could be incentivized to rise up against Assad, and ways in which psyops could be used to ensure widespread violence.

Here is a declassified CIA memo from 1986 in which the Central Intelligence Agency is seen exploring ways in which sectarian tensions can be inflamed to provoke a violent uprising in Syria. Here is a useful article featuring excerpts from the memo showing some jarring parallels between what was being planned and what happened a quarter century later.

Here is a video clip of General Wesley Clark naming Syria among the countries scheduled by the Pentagon for regime change in the wake of 9/11.

Here is a video clip of the former Foreign Minister of France stating in plain language that he was informed by British government insiders in 2009 that a violent Syrian uprising was being planned, two years before the violence erupted.

Here is an article featuring a video of the former Qatari Prime Minister stating that the US and its allies were involved in the violence from the very beginning.

Here is an article from May of 2011 reporting on some of the extremely suspicious provocations that led to the outbreak of widespread violence. Here’s another from March 2011. Here’s another from December 2011.

You get the picture. If a man had documented his plans to murder his wife with an axe, and those plans were found after his wife turned up dead of axe wounds exactly as he’d planned them, and multiple people in the area said they’d heard him murdering her with an axe, the primary suspect in that case would not be the neighbor’s cat.

The violence in Syria was planned and orchestrated years in advance, and now hundreds of thousands of human beings are dead as a direct result. And these monsters are now pretending to be concerned about human rights?

No. Get out of Syria, you absolute ghouls. Everyone responsible for perpetrating and sustaining these horrors should spend the rest of their lives in a Hague cell. If there is a chemical weapons attack as the Syrian government moves to recapture Idlib, the last people anyone should believe is the psychopathic governments who are responsible for this catastrophe in the first place.

By H. Zain/ Ghossoun
Source: SANA
Sweida – A massive popular funeral ceremony has been held on Thursday for the martyrs of the terrorist attacks targeted Sweida, SANA reporter said.

The participants in the funeral said that Sweida will ever remain an immune fortress in the face of terrorism as it offers sacrifices to defend the homeland.

They expressed readiness to defend their homeland and sacrifice their souls in defending its dignity, security and stability and eliminating the mercenary terrorists from each inch of the Syrian land.

On Wednesday, a number of citizens were martyred and others were injured in terrorist suicide bombing attacks in Sweida city synchronizing with Daesh (ISIS) attacks on a number of villages in the eastern and northern countryside of the province.

With the U.S. now unable to prevent Syrian government control of the Syria-Jordan border, Friday’s strikes are a sign that the U.S. effort to oust the Syrian government from Abu Kamal is likely to only grow stronger as its occupation of Syrian territory faces an uncertain future.
by Whitney Webb
Source: Mint Press News
ABU KAMAL, SYRIA – Around midnight on Friday, U.S.-led coalition warplanes in Syria conducted intensive airstrikes near Abu Kamal in the Deir ez-Zor province, with estimates of civilian casualties ranging from 30 to 54. Syrian state media agency SANA has claimed that at least 30 were killed and that most of the dead were women and children. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), often cited by international and particularly Western media, has assertedthat 54 were killed.

According to local reports, the U.S.-led coalition strikes targeted the towns of al-Souseh and al-Baghouz Fowqani, east of the Euphrates river in the countryside around Abu Kamal. The bombings resulted in dozens of houses in the towns collapsing, resulting in numerous civilian deaths, as whole families were crushed by the rubble while they were sleeping.

The U.S. coalition did not confirm or deny its role in the strike, stating only that it “may have” been responsible. However, the bombing comes after the coalition announced in early May it would intensify airstrikes targeting Daesh (ISIS), particularly in Eastern Syria along the Syria-Iraq border. Abu Kamal, where last night’s strikes took place, is a strategic border town on the Syria-Iraq border and is the only Syria-Iraq border crossing currently controlled by Syrian government forces.

Western media reports have claimed that Daesh militants were among the dead, but survivors of the attack contest this claim, instead suggesting that they had been targeted for their unwillingness to cooperate with local U.S.-backed militias. Locals told SANA that U.S. claims that the strikes were intended to target Daesh were false and instead suggested that two towns had been targeted for refusing the entry of the U.S.-backed opposition militias, particularly the Qasad militia.

Reports in Arabic media from earlier this year (English translation) have claimed to provide evidence that many former Daesh members have joined the Qasad militia, both in the province of Deir Ez-Zor and al-Hasakah. Such reports are consistent with U.S. support for other militia groups, such as the Deir Ez-Zor Military Council (DMC), that also include significant numbers of former Daesh fighters who had surrendered to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the proxy force of the coalition, over the course of the past year.

Losing influence elsewhere in Syria, the U.S. sets sights on Abu Kamal
The strike comes at a delicate time for the U.S. coalition in Syria, as its most important alliances, which enable its occupation of more than 30 percent of Syrian territory, threaten to dissolve while local resistance to the presence of foreign troops continues to grow.
MintPress has recently reported on these developments — regarding first the rise of local resistance to the U.S. presence from Arab and Kurdish tribes in U.S.-occupied Syria, and then the agreement between the Syrian government and factions of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG, the backbone of the U.S. proxy force, the SDF) behind the back of the U.S. coalition. Both developments threaten to make the U.S. occupation of Syrian territory not only ultimately unsustainable but indeed short-lived.

The U.S. has also lost influence elsewhere in Syria, particularly in Syria’s south owing to the Syrian government’s recent, highly successful campaign in the area. The offensive has seen the Syrian government reclaim nearly all of the Syrian-Jordan border and is likely to result in the U.S. abandoning its long-standing presence in al-Tanf, the strategic area where the borders of Syria, Jordan and Iraq meet.

The U.S. has maintained a military base at al-Tanf, where it has trained proxy fighters for the past several years, and has occupied a 34-mile zone surrounding that facility. Losing that location is a blow to U.S. influence in Syria and would mean a consolidation of U.S. occupation forces in the Eastern portion of Syria nominally controlled by the SDF.

For that reason, the recent strikes on Abu Kamal are notable, as they build on other recent coalition strikes in the area. Indeed, there is no Daesh presence in Abu Kamal aside from the pockets of Daesh that intermittently attack the Syrian government-held city from the area of Syria occupied by the U.S.

In addition, recent coalition bombings in and around Abu Kamal have shown that these strikes have nothing to do with wiping out Daesh. For instance, another recent coalition strike in the Abu Kamal area, which took place last month, did not target Daesh at all but instead Syrian government forces and allied Iraqi militias. Though the U.S. never publicly admitted responsibility for the attack and an anonymous U.S. official had blamed the strike on Israel, forensic evidence analyzed and collected by Iraqi forces showed that the U.S. was indeed responsible.

The U.S. interest in Abu Kamal is aimed at wresting the strategic outpost from the control of the Syrian government, which would result in the Syrian government losing its only road access to both Iraq and Iran. Cutting off this supply line, particularly the connection between Syria and Iran, has long been acknowledged as an important U.S. goal in its occupation of Northeastern Syria.

With the U.S. now unable to prevent Syrian government control of the Syria-Jordan border, Friday’s strikes are a sign that the U.S. effort to oust the Syrian government from Abu Kamal is likely to only grow stronger as its occupation of Syrian territory faces an uncertain future. If the high death tolls from the recent strike are any indication, the U.S. seems to have few qualms about killing scores of civilians in pursuit of its geopolitical goals in Syria.

Top Photo | A view of the city of Deir ez-Zor, Syria, Friday, Sept. 15, 2017. (AP Photo)
Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

By Hazem Sabbagh
Source: SANA
Moscow – Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that President Bashar al-Assad isn’t just defending Syria; he is defending the entire region against terrorism.

In an interview given to Britain’s Channel 4 on Friday, Lavrov said that President al-Assad is defending Syria’s sovereignty and unity, and on a wider scale he is defending the entire region against terrorism.

He reiterated that the Syrians alone will decide Syria’s future, stressing that the actions of Daesh (ISIS) and Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists are obstructing the implementation of the de-escalation agreement in the southern area in Syria.

Lavrov asserted that Russia will not withdraw its forces from Syria until the end of 2018, and that such withdrawal would depend on developments on the ground.

The Russian Minister said the decision to expand the mandate of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) violates the chemical weapons convention, and that Russia is working to remedy this situation, but if this doesn’t happen he said the OPCW’s days are numbered.

He said that Russia had trusted the OPCW until recently, but the Organization was subjected to serious manipulation two days ago.

By Manar al-Frieh/Manal
Source: SANA
Daraa -The Syrian Arab Army advanced in the northeastern countryside of Daraa province, killing scores of terrorists.

SANA’s war correspondent in Daraa said that the army restored control over the villages and towns of al-Herak, Rakham, al-Soura, Alma, al-Mliha al-Sharqia and al-Mliha al-Gharbia in Daraa countryside in the northeast of Daraa city.

Following the liberation, the army’s engineering units started combing the area in order to dismantle mines and IEDs planted by terrorists before they fled towards neighboring areas.

The reporter added that army units secured the families in their houses and enhanced military points in the liberated villages and towns to use them as a launchpad for continued military operations to eradicate the terrorist presence in the entire province of Daraa.

During the combing operation in Alma town, the army uncovered two ammunition caches, mostly western-made, two BMP vehicles, a bulldozer and a field hospital.

The hospital which is located on the outskirts of Alma town is a residential building with medicines from international organizations and regional countries that entered Syria illegally.

Speaking to SANA, a field commander said that army units used tactics compatible with the geographical nature of Alma town and fought violent clashes with terrorists who had barricaded themselves inside civilian houses which they turned into command sites.

The commander added that the 24-hours battles resulted in the liberating of the town by the army’s heroes while terrorists fled through agricultural roads in the eastern countryside of the province.

The Army will continue its operations till eradicating terrorism in Daraa, the commander said.

Army units also regained control over the Air Defense Battalion /49/ which was turned by terrorists into one of their sites.

Another field commander indicated that the Battalion overlooked Damascus-Daraa International Highway and a number of neighboring towns and was used by terrorists to fire shells at the Highway and attack the army’s points in the area.

SANA’s war correspondent cited information indicating that militants in the villages of Um Walad, Jbib and al-Aslaha in the farthest eastern countryside of Daraa agreed to hand over their weapons and join reconciliation.