(December 18, 2024)

RCA fighters who captured the Russian-controlled Syrian air base on the outskirts of the town last week said they had been told to prepare for Assad’s possible fall in early November, nearly three weeks before the offensive began.

Until one month earlier, Capt Mashadani had been second-in-command of the Abu Khatab brigade. This small unit of 150 men was created by US Special Forces and trained by their British counterparts in Jordan until 2016, to hunt down Isis fighters near Deir ez-Zor, a city in eastern Syria.