Cold and snow fall on the north of Syria. In the mountainous area behind Aleppo winter begins to sting strong and the change of climate falls on the colors that form the backdrop to the battlefields. The ocher yellow of the fighting in the desert areas gradually replaces the images of white mountains fouled by the remains of armed clashes.
It is a ritual that has been going on for years since 6.
Right among the rugged hills that lead to Al Bab, less than 50 km east of Aleppo, at this time the battle between the pro-shirring militias supported by the regular army of Ankara and armed sections of the Islamic State rages.
The repeated use of attacks carried out with a suicide car bombing by the Caliphate is inflicting heavy losses on the Turkish army and allied militias. Of these hours the news that in the hasty withdrawal from the western suburbs of Al Bab still in the hands of ISIS, the Turkish forces would have lost two Leopard 2 wagons, supplied to the troops of Shield of the Euphrates. The wagons, part of the 300 stock arrived from Germany in the 2005, would now be in the hands of the Caliphate militiamen. The tissue, distributed by agencies close to the fundamentalists, would not have been denied by the Turkish Command.
Since the 24 August, the date of the beginning of the military campaign in Syria, the commitment of the Turkish armored units has seemed particularly onerous. The widespread use of anti-tank weapons on many occasions has made life difficult for M60T, a modern Turkish-Israeli version of the old American M60, widely used by the Ankara army. Just a few days ago the news of the first Leopard 2 destroyed with a TOW missile by the militia of the Islamic State.
Nevertheless the maneuvering war undertaken in the north of Syria seems unable to ignore the use of heavy forces. This is what the Turkish General Staff suggests, which for the occasion states that the Leopards deployed are exclusively supplied to their own forces and not to the allied militiamen.
(photo: Türk Kara Kuvvetleri)
