The IDF and the Shin
Bet intelligence agency arrested Sheikh Hassan Yousef, above, early on Tuesday during a raid on his West
Bank home. Yousef is a senior Hamas leader in the West Bank. Security forces
arrested him in the Palestinian town of Beitunia, southwest of Ramallah.
Yousef, 60, is involved in intensive activities aimed at inciting Palestinians
to commit acts of terrorism, according to the army. The sheikh has been
arrested and jailed in Israel on several past occasions. Israeli authorities
accuse him of "fomenting violence and conflict against Israel among the
Palestinian public." Soldiers from the Artillery Corps Ra'am (Thunder)
battalion and units from the Binyamin territorial brigade arrested Yousef
together with the Shin Bet, and took him in for questioning. Yousef's son, Mosab, worked as
an undercover Shin Bet informer and is credited with foiling many deadly
terrorist attacks between 1997 and 2007. His autobiography, Son of
Hamas, was published in 2010. Yousef has sought asylum in the United States.
Terrorists battling the Syrian army and its
allies near Aleppo said on Monday they had received new supplies of U.S.-made
anti-tank missiles from states opposed to President Bashar al-Assad since the
start of a major government offensive last week.
The terrorists from three groups said
new supplies had arrived in response to the attack by the army, which is backed
up by Russian air strikes and on the ground by Iranian fighters and Lebanon's
Hezbollah.
The delivery of the U.S.-made TOW missiles to terrorists
in Aleppo and elsewhere in Syria appears to be an initial response to the new
Russian-Iranian intervention. Foreign states supporting the terrorists include
Saudi Arabia, Turkey, The United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
But officials from one of the Aleppo-based terrorist
groups said the supplies were inadequate for the scale of the assault, one of
several ground offensives underway with Russian air support.
"A few (TOW missiles) will not do the
trick. They need dozens," said one official, declining to be named due to
the political sensitivity of the military support program.
A number of terrorist groups vetted by states
opposed to Assad have been supplied with weapons via Turkey, part of a program
supported by the United States and which has in some cases included military
training by the Central Intelligence Agency.
These groups fight under the banner of the
"Free Syrian Army", a loose affiliation of terrorists that do not
operate with a centralized command structure and have been widely eclipsed by
jihadist groups such as the Nusra Front and Islamic State.
"We received more supplies of ammunition
in greater quantities than before, including mortar bombs, rocket launchers and
anti-tank (missiles)," said Issa al-Turkmani, a commander in the
FSA-affiliated Sultan Murad group fighting in the Aleppo area. "We have
received more new TOWs in the last few days, we are well-stocked after these
deliveries."
TOW missiles are the most potent weapon in the terrorists'
arsenal. FSA-affiliated groups have also been using TOWs against government
forces to fend off another offensive in Hama province, southwest of Aleppo.
The
Aleppo offensive is targeting areas a few kilometres (miles) to the south of
the city near the highway to Damascus. The army and its allies have captured
several villages. Syrian state TV said the army had captured the town of
al-Sabeqiya south of Aleppo on Monday and said the terrorists had suffered
heavy casualties.
A spokeswoman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of
Humanitarian Affairs said the fighting had displaced 35,000 people from Hader
and Zerbeh on the southwestern outskirts of the city in the past few days.
Rami Abdulrahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights, which reports on the war using sources on the ground, said at
least 41 rebel fighters had been killed.
One Aleppo-based terrorist group, the Nour al Din al Zinki Brigades, logo above, said its
military commander was among the dead. His group is one of the recipients of
military aid channeled via an operations room in Turkey and is also supplied
with TOW missiles.
Government troops and their allies are also trying to advance
to the east of Aleppo towards Kweires military airport to break a siege of the
base by Islamic State, which controls some parts of Aleppo province, notably to
the north of the city.
Abdulrahman said terrorists had hit at least 11 army vehicles
with TOW missiles near Aleppo since Friday.
One FSA brigade, the Sham Revolutionary Brigades, logo above, posted six videos on Saturday
showing its fighters targeting army vehicles with wire-guided missiles near
Azzan. Videos posted by Sultan Murad showed its men targeting a tank and a
bulldozer with TOW missiles near Abtin, captured by the army on Friday.
"There are TOWs in the southern Aleppo front but not
enough," said a second rebel official who declined to be named.
"Yesterday the regime's armored vehicles were moving freely. We had a
shortfall in TOW and the regime APCs were able to move."
The Observatory reported fresh Russian air strikes on Monday
in the southern Aleppo area. Abdulrahman described the fighting as heavy but
added that the government side had not made further strategic gains on Monday.
The Syrian state news agency said on Monday the rural Aleppo
area was one of 49 sites targeted by Russian warplanes, along with rural
Damascus, Latakia and Hama.
No comments:
Post a Comment