... your msm guide:
OFFENSIVE WAR
"Syrian government and allied Russian warplanes have intensified a week-long bombardment of Syria's Idlib province, targeting hospitals, schools and other civilian infrastructure as tens of thousands of residents fled toward the border with Turkey, activists and monitors in the rebel-held region said. The serial campaign has killed about 100 civilians and put at least 10 hospitals out of service." (Air strikes shatter Idlib truce, Zakaria Zakaria, Washington Post/Reuters/Sydney Morning Herald, 8/5/19)
"Waves of Russian and regime jets and helicopters have poured missiles and barrel bombs onto the enclave in the past week, destroying hospitals and killing scores of civilians." (Civilians, hospitals target of new Assad blitz, Richard Spencer, The Times/The Australian, 8/5/19)
defensive war
"In the course of [Operation] Cast Lead [2008-09], Israel had damaged or destroyed 'everything in its way,' and not in its way, including 58,000 homes, 1,500 factories and workshops, 280 schools and kindergartens, electrical, water, and sewage installations, 190 greenhouse complexes, 80% of agricultural crops, and nearly one-fifth of cultivated land. Whole neighborhoods were laid waste. It also damaged and destroyed 29 ambulances, almost half of Gaza's 122 health facilities (including 15 hospitals), and 45 mosques. By the time it withdrew, the IDF had left behind fully 600,000 tons of rubble and 1,400 corpses, 350 of them children." (Gaza: An Inquest into It's Martyrdom, Norman Finkelstein, 2018, p 127)
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On Idlib and the "breaking of the truce":
I have long given up on the Murdoch Empire or Reuters as sources of truthful reporting on the Middle East. And the usual search engines seem to fall into line, pointing me to them or their scions. Even the usual seaarch engines reveal interesting articles when you type "Reuters" and "Fake news" into them. I am giving a new search engine a try - Ecosia - which claims some green credentials. It, at least, found this Turkish (independent journalists) report from March - note:
https://www.turkishminute.com/2019/03/13/escalating-violence-in-syrias-idlib-threatens-truce-reached-by-turkey-russia-report/
"The alarming violence in the Idlib region threatens to unravel a truce reached between Turkey and Russia last year that averted a bloody assault by the government to retake the province, the last major rebel stronghold in war-torn Syria, The Associated Press reported.
"The escalation raises fears once more of a major assault by the forces of President Bashar al-Assad.
"Idlib has been in the hands of opposition forces for years,... Earlier this year, al-Qaeda-linked militants took over the province, squeezing out most other factions after clashes with Turkey-backed opposition fighters."
And a little later:
"In the early hours of a cold morning earlier this month, militants attacked several Syrian army positions and checkpoints on the edge of Idlib in the village of Masasneh, killing nearly two dozen soldiers — one of the most serious attacks on government forces since the truce reached in September. The attack triggered hours of fighting and bombardment that killed and wounded dozens of insurgents."
I also found this on a Qatari site:
https://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/article/07/05/2019/Escalation-in-Syria-s-Idlib-rattles-months-old-truce
"Under the September deal, hardliners were supposed to withdraw from the planned buffer zone, allowing traffic to once again flow along the two strategic highways, which connect government-held areas with the Turkish border.
Turkey has failed, however, to secure the jihadists' withdrawal, prompting government forces to take matters into their own hands, Syria specialist Fabrice Balanche said."
In other words Turkey is the country that has failed to honour the conditions of the truce. I suspect none of this was mentioned by our "unbiased" information sources.
Another interesting source is TTG on SST:
https://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2019/05/idlib-dawn-ttg.html#comments
S/he is a former US Intelligence person and whatever s/he writes has to be read with that in mind. Comments on the SST posts are always worth reading. They are often more aware than the authors of the articles.
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