So something weird happened in Yemen: Kerry announced a ceasefire, while the Hadi regime contradicted him, and was quite forthright how not in favor they were to have a ceasefire with the Houthis.
Not only does Kerry look desperate, lameduckness has set in quick now due to the election.
Of course, if he turns the screws and stops deliveries of military aid to the Saudis, I imagine the Hadi regime will be made to "understand" and accept.....but that assumes Obama has the balls to do it.
Show an affirming flame
If that ever happened, cue the screeches of "appeasing Iran".
Charlie Stross's cheerful, optimistic predictions for 2017, part one of three.
French SOF (apparently) blow up a suicide car. Gives you an idea how much explosives they pack into those things.
edited 16th Nov '16 3:16:20 AM by TerminusEst
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Isn't the scope of the explosion a mix of the amount of explosives and the destructive power of that missile (or whatever it is that came from above)?
(I'm a big n00b when it comes to weapons and their impact, so, ELI 5, please)
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"What was the last thing going through your mind at the time?" "My ass."
Hollywood should show more of this type of explosion. Not those big slow fireballs, but this sudden flash, that turns you from a threatening person with agency, into a punchline.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
Depends on what exactly hit it, although I'm fairly certain the latter contributes. A lot.
A conventional bomb uses sheer blast pressure and fragmentation to deal damage. And, of course, most plastic explosives need a separately sourced explosion to go off.
Antitank guided missiles are designed to penetrate instead of generate fragments, the idea that the heat and liquefied metal generated by the missile charge will do enough damage to the occupants and contents of the vehicle hit. I'm not sure if it can set off plastic explosives on their own, but anything else like an artillery shell is fair game.
edited 16th Nov '16 8:12:34 AM by Krieger22
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
NBC News is reporting that the only children's hospital in Eastern Aleppo was rendered unusable after a Syrian helicopter attack
. Video link only, though.
East Libyan army claims control of long-contested Benghazi district
The self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA), whose commander, Khalifa Haftar, is a figurehead for factions aligned with an eastern-based government, has been fighting Islamist militants and other militias in Benghazi for more than two years.
Fighting resumed this week in the southwestern district of Ganfouda and nearby Guwarsha, where the LNA said it had now flushed out the opposing forces.
"The forces of LNA have liberated Guwarsha and our forces found 15 bodies belonging to terrorist groups," military spokesman Ahmed al-Mismari told Reuters.
A video circulating on social media showed LNA special forces field commander Wanis Boukhamada shouting into a radio: "Repeat, repeat, the main road of Guwarsha district Shajar Street has fallen! ... God is great."
Libya slid into political turmoil and conflict after Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in an uprising five years ago. In 2014, rival parliaments and governments were set up in Tripoli and eastern Libya, both backed by loose alliances of armed groups. The eastern government, supported by the LNA, is opposed to a U.N.-backed government that arrived in Tripoli in March.
Clashes were continuing on Thursday around Ganfouda, where the LNA has besieged fighters from the Benghazi Revolutionaries Shura Council (BRSC), the main group fighting it.
The LNA also conducted air strikes in Ganfouda and another district, Sabri, a military official said.
At least 13 LNA soldiers were killed and 15 wounded in the fighting, medical officials said. Four of the dead were killed in a mine explosion in Guwarsha, they said.
A car bomb exploded near a building captured by the LNA in Ganfouda, though the number of casualties was not immediately clear, security and medical officials said.
The BRSC claimed responsibility for the bombing, according to a statement posted from a Twitter account close to the group.
The LNA also has a presence in parts of southern Libya.
(Writing by Aidan Lewis; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
Yemen's Houthis say they want to end war, form unity government
The announcement appeared to confirm the details of a deal set out by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry a day earlier that he said included plans for a ceasefire starting on Thursday.
Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the political council of the Houthi's Ansarullah group, said Saudi Arabia had also agreed to end its involvement in the war - though there was no official confirmation from Riyadh.
An Arab alliance led by Saudi Arabia intervened in the Yemen conflict in March last year in support of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after the Iran-aligned Houthis advanced on his interim capital in Aden and forced him into exile.
"Ansarullah's position has been and still is with stopping the war and the establishment of a national unity government that incorporates all political components," Bukhaiti told Reuters, responding to a question on Kerry's announcement.
"The new thing is in the position of Saudi (Arabia), which has agreed in principle to stop the war as one of the parties to the conflict," Bukhaiti added.
After months of bombings and other attacks, no side has emerged as the dominant force in a war that has displaced more than three million people, left parts of the population on the edge of starvation and given room for a powerful branch of al Qaeda to expand its operations.
CEASEFIRE
Kerry, in what could be his last trip to the Gulf before President Barack Obama's term ends in January, said on Tuesday that officials from the Houthi group and the Saudi-led coalition meeting had agreed to a ceasefire starting on Thursday.
Underlining the complexity of the situation, Hadi's government quickly rejected the move, complaining that it had been bypassed. Copies of a U.N. peace plan seen by Reuters in October suggested he would be sidelined in any future government.
Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdel-Malek al-Mekhlafi said Kerry's announcement had not been coordinated with the government which, he said, was not interested in the plan.
"I believe the current U.S. administration is incapable of providing any guarantees to any party and what Kerry has said is no more than a media bubble at our people's expense," Mekhlafi told Qatar-based Al Jazeera television.
The frontline has changed little over the past few months despite repeated offensives by Hadi's supporters who operate under air cover from the Saudi-led alliance.
Hadi's government says the Houthis have illegally seized power in a coup backed by Iran, and demands that they quit the cities they have seized and hand over heavy weapons before any political settlement starts.
The Houthis say they seized power to end corruption and to get rid of Islamist militants they say had expanded their influence during Hadi's presidency.
(Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari, writing by Sami Aboudi; Editing by Andrew Heavens)
Russian media is reporting that Daesh is fighting tooth and nail in Mosul and actually successfully halting the Iraqi Army's advance despite being severely outnumbered and outgunned. Don't know how much of it is actually true.
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
The closest to that I've heard is that the government aligned forces are still working on gaining a defensible foothold. And what they have now doesn't protect civilians from mortar and sniper fire.
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
Daesh have had a very long time to settle in at Mosul and prepare for the impeding attack. They must have set up an incredible amount of traps and dug miles of tunnels. You wouldn't expect it to be easy to take the city from them. Everything I read before the attack suggested that it would take a massive sacrifice in terms of manpower, resources, and time to get the city back. It's not surprising at all that this is proving the case.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
So several Turkish soldiers were just killed in an attack on their positions near al-Bab. The notable part about that though is there is a dispute on what kind of an attack it was. The Turks are saying it was an airstrike from the Syrian Air Force. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, however, is saying it was a Daesh suicide attack.
Assuming the SOHR is right, the Turks are trying to cook up some sort of cassus belli for going into the Aleppo meatgrinder, methinks.
If the Turks are right, then Assad is an even bigger fool than I thought, and this just got even more complicated than it was before.
Either way, the Russians (and perhaps even Trump) are gonna have to hold Ankara back.
EDIT- Oh and, as for Aleppo, winter has come (pun unintended). Pools of standing water have started to freeze and firewood is in extremely short supply. If it starts to snow there, the city scape will bear more than a passing resemblance to Stalingrad.
edited 24th Nov '16 10:47:47 AM by FFShinra
Assaulting an urban center with heavily entrenched defenders requires somewhere around triple the amount of troops the defender has (in traditional thinking). Assuming anybody down there is even remotely competent, be it those holding Aleppo or otherwise.
edited 24th Nov '16 10:50:46 AM by TerminusEst
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
Yes, but what happens when said city is split among multiple defenders who don't like each other too much?
The law in the night
Well I hope there aren't many civilians there because the other option is to pull a Zhukov and level the place with artillery until the rubble is hammered into dust.
Inter arma enim silent leges
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
Well, even for those not vaporized or crushed by rubble due to Assad's bombardment, they will be facing starvation in 10 days should aid not get through.
Fuck you, Tulsi Gabbard.
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
Iran is considering naval facilities in Syria and Yemen.
More and more, the Arab Spring seems to be the precursor to something rather bad. Like the Serb independence movement over a hundred years ago was a precursor to something bad....
Springtime for Iran?
I am actually worried of the IRGC's role in that. The Saudis will have a collective aneurysm.
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
Fuck you, Fascist sympathizers
How would Iran get them in Yemen? The Houthis are pitching for a unity government now, i had heard, but i imagine a unity government would be the kind to not want Yemen involved in geopolitics (mostly as they couldn't agree on whose side they should be aligned with).
Would that it were so simple.
"Fuck you, Tulsi Gabbard."
Oh dear, what has she done now?
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
Causing freakouts over sourcing since 2018
Called it an "illegal, counterproductive war to overthrow Assad". By the US. Quite frankly despite Trump's pettiness it seems like some self-declared liberals haven't figured out what exactly someone even less predisposed to mercy can do.
Bellingcat on the child soldiers of the Syrian Civil War.
edited 29th Nov '16 7:34:08 AM by Krieger22
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot
Fuck you, Fascist sympathizers
More or less after the last ceasefire went belly-up, Aleppo's fate was sealed. But it's hard to go and tell the Aleppo fighters "hey, surrendering is your only rational choice" when they could say back to you "Remember Papa Assad and Homs?"
A procrastination in of itself
Surrender isn't exactly a rational choice, if they surrender they'll likely all be executed anyway, might as well die fighting.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
United Earth
And that's why you don't corner your enemies; desperation is dangerous.
Mad Max style vehicles have been common in Syria.