In the latest terrorist atrocity on Thursday, ten civilians were killed and many others were injured in rocket attacks on Esh al-Warwar and Mezzeh 86 neighborhoods in Damascus and its countryside. In the attack on Esh al-Warwar neighborhood, north of Damascus, 7 civilians were killed, four from the same family.

Nasser Mashhour and three of his children, Omar Mashhour, Ayah Mashhour, and Noor Mashhour were killed when a mortar shell struck their house’s living room.

Yet another terrorist atrocity against the people of Syria. Yet another day when the people of Damascus can’t even feel safe in their own houses. A person’s house is supposed to be their sanctuary, but for the takfiri savages jettisoned into Syria by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and NATO terrorist collaborators, it is designed to be their graveyard.

Predictably, it is also yet another atrocity which passes by the news desks of western mainstream media, but is dismissed as they are unworthy victims that don’t fit the narrative. Western media tenaciously cling to the narrative that there are “ moderate rebels ” running around Syria, desperately fighting a tyrannical regime, heroically clinging to the territory they have gained even as they are mercilessly and indiscriminately bombed and besieged by “Assad forces.”

On 31 January a child was killed by artillery’s shells fired by terrorists on Sa’Sa town in the southwestern part of Damascus Countryside. SANA News reported the killing as being carried out by Jabhat Al-Nusra, an internationally recognized terrorist group. It has rebranded itself more than once, trying to shake off the tag of one of the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups. It rebranded to Jabhat Fateh Al-Sham at around the time cease fires were announced to separate so called moderate groups from ISIS and Al-Nusra, with the intent of isolating and targeting the groups. This was a forlorn exercise as many of the groups saw Al-Nusra as their allies and refused to disassociate from them, continuing with their “intermingling” as famously said by former State Department spokesman John Kirby.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Jj-iwH_0MQA

Later on the rebranding evolved to merging with other terrorist groups and heading Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, which is currently the dominant force in Idlib. Rebranding may work in cheap consumer culture, but the people of Syria are not fooled. Once a terrorist always a terrorist is the most apt description you will hear on the Syrian street.

It should also be said that as the fighting in and around Damascus has been waged for several years, all combatants are aware of where the civilian areas are, making this nothing more than an outrageous act of terror on civilian areas that ended the life of another young child.

On 29 January, seven civilians were injured by mortar attacks that hit the suburb of Harasta in Damascus countryside and Ish al-Warwar neighborhood in Damascus. This time the perpetrators Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham(Al-Nusra) were joined by their terrorist allies Ahrar Al-Sham.

As the physical war on Syria slowly but inexorably turns in its favour, the western media persists with the myths of its information war. The idea of the moderate rebel, the inaccurate portrayal of this being a civil war and the constant barrage of accusations that the Syrian army uses chemical weapons on its own people, continues to gain currency in the world of western media. The lies of the military industrial complex media however started to fall flat quite some time ago and are on an ever downward trajectory.

The descriptor “moderate” has no place when describing who the terrorists are who fired the mortars at the Mashhour family home. Eastern Ghouta has been occupied by Jaysh Al-Islam (Army of Islam) since 2013, and further back when they were known as Liwa al-Islam, who carried out the July 2012 bombing of the National Security headquarters in Damascus, killing and injuring a number of top military and security officials.

As one of their final acts before merging with other terrorist groups to become Jaysh Al-Islam, Liwa Al-Islam carried out the infamous chemical weapons attack in Ghouta on 21 August 2013. The terrorist atrocity almost bestowed on the takfiris the notoriety of being able to provoke the Obama regime into enacting its long held plan to launch massive military strikes on Syria.

The Obama regime quickly blamed the Syrian government for the attack, something repeated by the Trump regime in April 2017 in Idlib —the difference being Trump did launch the Tomahawk missiles —with the common theme of belligerent threats and baseless accusations made absent of any actual evidence at hand. In the case of Ghouta, the terrorist atrocity occurred just as United Nations investigators were preparing to investigate alleged chemical weapons attacks carried out by terrorists at Khan al Asal which killed 25 Syrians , including 19 soldiers. Needless to say, the Ghouta attack ended the UN venture abruptly.

It is perhaps fortunate for Jaysh Al-Islam and its backer in Turkey—not withstanding the UN can’t be trusted— that the investigation was ended before it could even begin.

Any rigorous and honest investigation may have turned up the heat on the Turkish government, which, via the national intelligence agency, the MIT, had worked directly with al-Nusra and its allies to develop a chemical warfare capability.

Put simply, Turkey’s intelligence agencies worked closely with Al-Nusra and other terrorists on a plan to use Sarin gas in a false flag operation designed to draw the US into launching massive military strikes which would seriously degrade the military capabilities of the SAA. The planned for devastation of the defences of the SAA would enable the terrorist groups to gain the upper hand and overrun the SAA, just as had happened in Libya after its military was devastated by NATO airstrikes.

Jaysh Al-Islam had in its leader Zahran Alloush, a man whose extreme Salafist ideology was suited perfectly to having no hesitation in carrying out such a heinous crime. The Salafist terrorist group is backed by Saudi Arabia and Alloush had close contacts with Turkey. Robert Ford , the former US ambassador to Syria, who was responsible for helping to foment and spread terrorism across Syria in the initial days of 2011, thought Alloush was a moderate. The scrubbing and cleansing of the reality of terrorists is not a new phenomenon, political figures such as Ford seasoned campaigners in the spread of lies and propaganda.

Reality clashed head on however with the credentials of Alloush as a so called moderate leader. He advocated and was fighting for the establishment of an Islamic state in Syria, anathema to the existing secularism and pluralism the country lived under and has fought for seven years to defend.

As for Alloush’s views of those who didn’t subscribe for his vision of the future for Syria, it can succinctly be summed up by his desire to “cleanse” Damascus of “Majous” (pejorative Arabic term for Iranians) “Rafideh” (Shi’ites) and “Nusayris” (Alawites).

The propensity to use chemical weapons didn’t diminish over time. Why would it, when western media and western governments are so eager to believe accusations spread by the terrorist groups and the western intelligence asset the White Helmets that the Assad government uses them repeatedly. Thus it came as no surprise when Jaysh Al-Islam used chlorine gas against the YPG in Sheikh Maqsood in 2016, actually admitting to doing so.

The beyond trustable Turkish President Erdogan invested heavily in overthrowing the Syrian government right from the outset of the war on Syria. Turkey was used as a recruiting, training, arming and staging ground for the launch of huge numbers of terrorist fighters over the border into Syria. The close partnership with ISIS is undeniable , despite Erdogan’s rage when confronted by the facts and shifting alliances more toward the FSA which he is using currently against the Kurds in Afrin does not change the facts.

It is not hard to imagine the outright rage Erdogan would have felt when Turkish MP Eren Erdem of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) alleged that Sarin gas sourced from Europe had been smuggled into Syria with the help of Turkish citizens. Arrests were made by the Adana Chief prosecutor’s office, however as quickly as the case was opened, it was inconceivably closed, the suspects released, further investigations dropped and the case disappeared down a black hole. Erdem himself faced an investigation for treason and death threats from those uncomfortable he had gotten too close to the truth.

The SAA is currently engaged in an offensive on Jaysh Al-Islam held areas of East Ghouta, striving once again to push the terrorists out of what is one of their last remaining strongholds. Success contributes greatly to overall objectives of liberating Damascus as part of the campaign to totally liberate Syria from the clutches of terrorists, but also at a local level, means that we will not see continued barbaric killings of families such as the Mashhour family.

Those who support the sovereignty of Syria and the desire of its people to rid their country of terrorists and their backers— notably the US—wish the SAA luck in finally driving Jaysh Al-Islam and other terrorists from the Damascus area. It would be so much easier if not for the fact the terrorists have enjoyed continued US patronage and a never ending supply of weapons courtesy of the $2 billion Pentagon covert arms supply program and the supposedly cancelled $1 billion plus CIA covert program .

Forgetting grand public announcements, can anyone seriously believe the US is backing off an inch in its support of terrorists and its insistence that “Assad must go.” The US has denied that a US made MANPAD was responsible for the shooting down of a Russian SU25 on Saturday.

We should gain a clearer picture soon of the country of origin of the MANPAD, as the renowned elite Syrian Army unit known as the Tiger Forces have been sent to conduct a Special Forces operation at the crash site area to recover missile fragments which will enable its identification.

The soldiers of the Tiger Forces posted a video, promising revenge against the terrorists. “Now they need to be stepped on. Now we’re on our way to Idlib. We’re going to Saraqeb to run them over, to teach them a lesson about bringing down planes,” the video message said.

We can only look forward to this being a success and that the whole of Idlib province is purged of terrorists along with their MANPADS.

Revenge and justice is also required for the shooting down of Syrian Arab Air Force Pilot Bassam Ghassan. As Syria News reported at the time, “On 26 December , another US owned terrorist murdered another Syrian soldier, defending his homeland within its borders, from foreign terrorists. Syrian Arab Air Force pilot Bassam Ghassan was shot down while on a mission against al Nusra savages in Hama countryside.”

— Paul Mansfield

Update 5 February: New mortar attacks by moderate terrorist factions of eastern Ghouta have killed two civilians and injured 13, in Damascus and its countryside.