Talk:Maksar al-Husan Massacres, Mid-September, 2013

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Maaloula connection?

Interesting add. Reminded me of Maaloula and after digging a bit, the timing suggests that there might be the same scum involved. As I understand it, there have been two larger battles to re-take Maaloula, one on Saturday the 7th and one on Sunday the 15th. On the 10th, SyrPer brags about 159 killed in the first battle, and on the 12th he writes

Yesterday, Wednesday, September 11, 2013 at about 7:30 p.m. Damascus time, the last foot soldier-rat of the Jabhat Al-Nusra and Al-Faarooq Battalion, departed Ma'loolaa for the areas of Yabrood, Al-Nabak and Al-Qaarra. Their numbers were in the hundreds and they will have to be killed soon enough when the army and militias are properly configured for that campaign.

As there was a huge battle on the next weekend, these weren't "the last foot-soldiers" who left obviously, but if the front group headed north-east as he writes, they could well have made it to these villages just in time for the reported battle on the 10th. Found this video on the official Farouk Brigade channel, which shows a larger group travelling and then fighting in what looks pretty much like what this area seems to be, slightly mountainous half-desert. Uploaded on the 11th and apparently shown on Al Jazeera Arabic as it is. --CE (talk) 12:00, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm The distance is pretty big, about 130 km, while the three towns cited are all within about 30 km. But it least it's all in the same direction, northeast up the mountain valleys. Also the Matras killings are pretty far from both, though all could be related in some early-September push to terrify Christian and Alawi communities all over, all of it justified by the Ghouta attack and whatever else sounds good. --Caustic Logic (talk) 10:41, 18 October 2013 (UTC)