U.N. Sends First Syria Aid Without Government Consent

The BBC reports that the United Nations “has sent its first aid convoy into Syria without the consent of the government in Damascus. It comes a week after the U.N. adopted a resolution allowing aid deliveries without the Syrian government’s approval. Nine trucks carrying food and sanitation supplies entered Syria from Turkey on Thursday.”

More than 10.8 million Syrians are in need of aid, and over 9 million have been displaced from their homes by fighting, which began in 2011. Until now, 90 percent of international aid into Syria has gone to government-controlled areas. Ban Ki-Moon has called the regime’s aid blockades a “war tactic.”

The network reports that aid trucks entered northern Syria from the Bab al-Salam crossing on the border with Turkey, and that it will take some time for aid to reach its intended destination.

Islamic Militants Seize Part of Syrian Army Base

The AP reports that the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on Thursday “overran part of an army base in northern Syria, which has been under the militants’ siege for months, in ferocious battles that killed or wounded dozens on both sides.”

The battle is the latest in ISIS’s renewed push to capture as much territory in eastern Syria as it can. Since its June offensive on Mosul, the Sunni militant group has seized a chunk of territory along the Iraq-Syria border, and declared a caliphate.

“The base lies in Raqqa province, where much of the territory fell to the Syrian opposition last year,” the wire reports. “The assault on the base began around midnight on Wednesday with two suicide car bombs, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Syrian army helicopters fought back, targeting jihadi positions around the base.”

Rise of ISIS Tests Syrian Army’s Strategy

Reuters reports that ISIS’s growing power means that Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian army are now “having to confront a group it has until now been reluctant to attack for political reasons.”

The emergence of ISIS has so far allowed Assad to present himself to the world as a bulwark against Sunni Islamist radicals, the wire says, while at the same time, the group’s tendency to fight more moderate rebel forces helped to divide the opposition.

“As a result, some analysts suspect army commanders pursued a twin-track strategy against ISIS,” it writes. “They have sought to reduce the group’s threat to the state, while ensuring it remains strong enough to continue feuding with other rebels. Now that ISIS’s fighters have gained momentum in Syria, boosted by equipment seized in a rapid offensive next door in Iraq, the army may need to become more confrontational with the group if it wants to avoid losing territory to it.”

Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team

The Atlantic: Obsessing about Gaza, Ignoring Syria (and Most Everything Else)

WSJ: Islamist Militants Gain in Syria

Reuters: All Toxic Chemicals Removed From Syria Now at Destruction Sites: OPCW