Kuwaiti newspaper Alrai reported Saturday that the Syrian army has given dozens of Soviet-era tanks to Hezbollah to help battle its enemies,.
Kuwaiti paper says 100 Iranian soldiers land in Damascus as Tehran, Moscow and Hezbollah work to prop up Assad regime.
According to the report, the move comes as Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Russia have launched a “joint operations room” to coordinate their campaign to defeat the extremist Islamic State group, which has captured swathes of Syrian territory during the country’s four-year civil war, as well as the opposition groups seeking to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The newspaper quotes official sources as saying that each party will be responsible for particular areas of Syria, with Russia operating in Latakia, Hama and some parts of the Aleppo province, while Iran will be defending the capital Damascus and down to Quneitra on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights.
The report also states that some 100 Iranian special forces trained in urban warfare have arrived in Damascus
Hezbollah will reportedly be taking up positions around Homs, where the ancient city of Palmyra — now largely decimated by Islamic State — is located. The Syrian army has received substantial support from thousands of fighters dispatched from Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Lebanon — and most notably fellow Iranian client Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, the Israel Defense Forces has been preparing for a possible ground operation on the Syrian side of the Golan in the event of sustained rocket strikes or coordinated terror attacks against Israel by Hezbollah.
The number of Islamists flooding into the area close to the border with Israel has the IDF on high alert, Channel 2 reported last month, adding that the military had held a large-scale drill simulating a possible advance into Syria and the evacuation of Israeli civilians from border communities.
