Syria Direct: News Update 11-12-14

Red Crescent delivers aid to Waer, residents skeptical

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent supervised the delivery of an aid caravan made up of 12 trucks into the rebel holdout district of Al-Waer in Homs city on Tuesday, reported Syrian official news agency SANA, while residents remain wary of the humanitarian mission’s purpose.

“People are saying that the UN only came to deliver aid in order for the siege to continue and the escalation to resume,” Mohammed al-Homsi, the alias of a citizen journalist in Al-Waer told Syria Direct on Tuesday.

Al-Homsi confirmed that the 12 trucks reported by SANA, loaded with food, entered Al-Waer, along with an additional 11 trucks carrying blankets and cleaning supplies.

Rebels in Al-Waer were negotiating a truce with the regime before two car bombings in front of a school in the Alawite-majority neighborhood of Akrama on October 1 in Homs abruptly scuttled the talks.

In the wake of the Akrama bombings, the regime replaced the head of the military security branch in Homs and began a new wave of bombings and air strikes against Al-Waer.

Red Crescent aid caravan enters Al-Waer on Tuesday. Photo courtesy of Jodi al-Homsiya.

Regime security cordon sets stage for Hama ambush

Regime forces staged an ambush Tuesday in the eastern Hama countryside that targeted two vehicles transporting injured rebel fighters, reported pro-opposition Syria Mubasher news. The ambush killed 30 and wounded 25, while 25 others escaped.

A video uploaded to YouTube Tuesday by Syria Mubasher reportedly shows the bodies of a dozen of the dead rebels, who were being moved from the northern Homs countryside to rebel-controlled areas in northern Syria to receive medical treatment

The rebels were moving the wounded fighters because they were unable to receive medical treatment in the contested Homs countryside, and opted to take the dangerous route north, past a regime security cordon imposed across northern Homs and southern Hama. 

Pro-regime Al-Baath newspaper reported Tuesday that “roughly 40 terrorists from ‘Jabhat a-Nusra’ were killed, and others wounded in an ambush set up by the Syrian Arab Army in the Hama countryside.”

Iran designed missiles Syria uses, says general

Iran built Syria’s missile production factories and designed the missiles that Damascus is now using in the war with its opposition, an Iranian general told state television on Tuesday.

“The missile production plants in Syria have been built by Iran and the missiles designed by Iran are being produced there,” General Ali Amir Hajizadeh, the head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s aerospace division, told the Iranian state-affiliated Fars News Agency on Tuesday.

Hajizadeh added that Hezbollah, another crucial Assad ally, along with Palestinian resistance groups also receive support and missile expertise from Iran, reported Dubai-based news agency Al-Arabiya.

Missile and aerial superiority has been a crucial advantage for the regime in its fight against the rebels. Several of the rebels’ military strategies have focused on capturing regime airports, as well as missile and barrel bomb production sites.

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