Eurasia Press & News
“Deir ez-Zor military airport is not like Tabqa airport,” said Brigadier General Essam Zahr al-Din, threatening ISIS operatives that they would be grave at the doors of the airport, coinciding with crowds of ISIS at the gates of the airport in preparation for storming it.
However, one day after this statement, one day (September 1) appeared in one of the leaked photos, in the city of Sweida, his hometown, attending the “Mernicology of the Martyrs” ceremony, amid news from supporting sources indicating that 400 elements and officers accompanied Zahr al-Din on his withdrawal journey.
The pro-Assad street received this news with great indignation and anger, fearing that the scenario has become clear for the handover of the airport, similar to the airport of Tabqa, which fell at the end of last August amid field executions of more than 400 fighters of Assad’s soldiers, when the official news agency SANA considered its fall “a successful regroupment after the evacuation of the airport.”
Pro-Assad regime pages have seen social media posts and comments that hold the Assad regime fully responsible in the event of the fall of the airport, accusing senior officers of “treason.”
One of the supporters and calls himself “Assad’s roar” through his page on the Facebook site questioned the way the Brigadier General “Alis Zahr al-Din is responsible for the military actions in Deir ez-Zor, where are the concerned parties, where Maher al-Assad and his deadly power, how they allow him to escape from the airport and leave the soldiers without any command to guide them and issue orders to them,” adding, “Zahr al-Din did not withdraw alone, but withdrew with him officers and soldiers supported from above, and left the rest of our soldiers to slaughter.”
For his part, Dred al-Assad, son of Rifaat (Bashar’s uncle) said through his page, “A few days before the fall of the strategic Tabqa airport, the official Syrian media channels broadcast reports about our army’s control of the airport… and they are only days until the airport fell, and hundreds of officers were killed and captured, describing the officers and soldiers,” sharply criticizing the pro-Assad media, “Is there after all this media who parallels this official Syrian media whores.. A whore and you will remain a prostitute, and there will be every blood that has fallen on the soil of the airport of the class, I honor all of you, you who are hostages.”
On the other hand, ISIS directed its cannons to Deir ez-Zor military airport after the liberation of the Tabqa military airport, which is about 150 km from the Deir airport, and is fortified by about 1500 elements and officers, before the withdrawal of “Zuhr al-Din” and those with him to Sweida.
The organization seeks to repeat the scenario of Tabqa airport, the headquarters of the 17th Division and the 93rd Brigade in the same area, and strengthen its iron grip in eastern Syria, and Deir ez-Zor airport is a key goal of organizing a systematic theory of control over the entire eastern region connected to its areas of control in Iraq.
Zahreddin’s withdrawal from the airport comes amid an international campaign to fight the Islamic State and an effort by the Assad regime to coordinate with the West in fighting it, while the United States is moving to support the moderate opposition.
