Regime jet crashes in eastern Suweida Province near Jordanian border
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- Airstrikes “Only 100 Meters” from Camps for Displaced Syrians Near Jordanian Border
- Opposition: We’ll Accept Turkish Military Moving Into Idlib Province
Rebels say they shot down an Assad regime MiG-21 jet fighter on Tueesday in southeast Syria.
The regime military confirmed the crash of the jet but did not cite a cause. An “army source” said an investigation had been launched.
Rebels released photos of the injured pilot, named as Major Ali al-Hilwa, with bruises on his face. They also circulated images of the fighter who supposedly shot down the jet and the wreckage.
#FSA ll #Suweida#Photo: Pilot Major Ali Hilweh, from Misyaf, arrested by FSA after his warplane was shot down in Syrian Desert
#Syria pic.twitter.com/5P7TB0wu4C
— FSA News (@FSAPlatform) August 15, 2017
The jet crashed in eastern Suweida Province, near the Jordanian border. Last week pro-Assad forces took about 30 km (19 miles) along the border, including crossing points, as rebels withdrew.
See Syria Daily, August 11: Pro-Assad Forces Advance in Southeast
Airstrikes “Only 100 Meters” from Camps for Displaced Syrians Near Jordanian Border
Citizen journalists reported a fifth consecutive day of pro-Assad attacks on Tuesday near camps for displaced Syrians near the Jordanian border.
Regime airstrikes have reportedly hit “only 100 meters” from tents in the desert area. About 50 people from the Hadalat camp moved on Tuesday to the poorly-supplied Rukban camp, 120 km (74 miles) to the northeast, as regime warplanes circled above, according to Rukban-based citizen journalist Emad Abu al-Sham.
An estimated 250 people of the 5,000 in Hadalat have fled to Rukban in the past five days, he said.
Many people have been effectively trapped in the Rukban camps, known as “The Berm”, since Jordan closed the border in June 2016, following Islamic State attacks on its security forces. The camps have long suffered from shortages of food, water, and medicine.
See UN: Almost 50,000 Still Stranded Near Jordanian Border
The Hadalat camp is near a former crossing point with Jordan, to the east of border territory taken by pro-Assad forces last week in eastern Suweida Province.
Opposition: We’ll Accept Turkish Military Moving Into Idlib Province
The Syrian opposition’s interim government has said it will accept the movement of the Turkish military into opposition-held Idlib Province in northwest Syria.
The head of the interim government, Jawad Abu Hatab, said:
The people of Idlib resist external invasion by Russia and the United States of America as much as they can, but the Turkish army is a source of security for us, and if its forces come to our region, the people will embrace them without hesitation.
Syria has been faced with the attempts to divide by the dark forces, and these evil forces have turned their attention to Idlib, so Turkey is the most important source of security for us during this process, and any solution without Turkey may deepen the humanitarian crisis in the region.
Rebels took almost all of Idlib Province, including the provincial capital Idlib city, in spring 2016. Russia declared a de-escalation zone in early May — in effect sanctioning a de facto partition — over the province and parts of neighboring Aleppo, Latakia, and Hama Provinces, but the opposition fears that the Assad regime and its allies will persist in attempts to overrun the area.
More than two million Syrians, many of them displaced, live in the province.