The Syrian Arab Army's "Tiger Forces" and their allies have officially captured every village inside the Al-Safira Plains today after a very long battle at the Aleppo Thermal Power Plant this past week.A map of the SAA's gains:
According to a battlefield correspondent at the Kuweires Military Airport, sappers from the Syrian Arab Army's engineering corps are now clearing the IEDs placed by the terrorists from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) before they fled the area.
The source added that some 700 ISIL terrorists fled the Al-Safira Plains this past week, leaving only 100-150 fighters left to control the Thermal Power. However, those terrorists were unable to hold on for very long, thanks in large part to the Tiger Forces, who surrounded the entire facility while also seizing the Aleppo-Raqqa Highway.
The SAA has "now built a buffer on three sides of Aleppo: the Deir Hafer plains to the east, Hadar and the surrounding areas to the South, and the recently captured corridor to Nubl/Zahraa in the North. This would suggest that the final stage of this operation is going to be to secure the villages to the west of Aleppo, probably with an upward thrust from Khan Tuman. If that is concluded successfully, then the SAA will have essentially captured Aleppo; all that will remain is convincing the rebels to withdraw from the three towns along the international highway from Turkey to Aleppo." Here's a visual of the Aleppo region:
ISIS is now in serious trouble:
With the loss of the Al-Safira Plains to the Syrian Armed Forces, ISIL will now have to double-up their efforts to protect their strongholds of Al-Bab and Deir Hafer; these two cities have long been under the control of the terrorist group and if they were to lose them, they would be in serious trouble.According to Russian military reports, ISIS and other militant groups are fleeing Aleppo in the hopes of making it across the border to Turkey.
Meanwhile, southeast of Aleppo, the Syrian Armed Forces are pushing northeast to the Tabaqa Military Airport; it is very likely that the Tiger Forces push to Deir Hafer and then southeast to the Jirah Military Airport to eventually flank the ISIL.
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