Syria militants get ‘excellent’ amount of foreign-supplied Grad rockets

A militant commander in Syria says its group has received foreign-supplied surface-to-surface Grad rockets amid the escalation of fighting in the embattled northwestern city of Aleppo.

Fares al-Bayoush, the militant commander, told Reuters on Wednesday that the new type of the rockets, which have a range of 22 and 40 kilometers, were supplied in "excellent quantities" and would be used in battlefronts in Aleppo, Hama and the coastal region.

Syria's militants had already received Grad missiles with a 20-kilometer range, but Bayoush stressed that the latest dispatch was the first time the militants got this particular type of rockets.

Each salvo contains 40 rockets, he said without elaborating.

Bayoush further complained that the militants had not received anti-aircraft missiles they had demanded.

A video posted on YouTube on Monday showed members of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) militant group firing Grad missiles at government positions near Aleppo.

Commenting on the footage, Bayoush confirmed the weapons shown in the video were newly supplied.

Aleppo has been divided over the past four years between government forces in the west and foreign-backed terrorists in the east, making it a frontline battleground.

Syrian government forces have managed to cut major militant supply routes from Turkey, which has long severed as the main gateway for the transfer of new militant recruits and weapons into the Arab country.

The United States, along with its allies, has long been supporting what it calls “moderate” militants fighting to topple the Damascus government. Some of such militant groups have also received military training overseen by the CIA in Syria’s neighboring countries.

The Pentagon has on several occasions airdropped weapons for militants. Some of the weapons have ended up in the hands of Daesh terrorists.

Since March 2011, Syria has been gripped by militancy it blames on some Western states and their regional allies.

Syrian army wipes out militants' gathering center

In another development on Wednesday, the Syrian military said in a statement that it had destroyed a meeting place of the Jabhat Fateh al-Sham terrorist group, al-Qaeda's Syrian branch formerly known as al-Nusra Front, in Aleppo’s Salah al-Din neighborhood.

Arms and ammunition depots were demolished in the Syrian army attack, the statement added without specifying whether it inflicted any casualties on the militants.

FSA commander killed in bomb attack

Additionally on Wednesday, the FSA announced on its social media account that Hussam al-Hajah aka Abu Zeid, one of its senior military commanders, was killed in a bomb attack targeting his armored vehicle on a road east of the southwestern Syrian city of Dara’a.

The FSA also said militant field commander Thabet al-Masalmah was seriously injured in the bombing.

The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and United Nations Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura have put the death toll from the Syria conflict at more than 300,000 and over 400,000, respectively.

This is while the UN has stopped its official casualty count in Syria, citing its inability to verify the figures it receives from various sources.

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