World Tribune: FSA Defeat in Aleppo “Disaster for Doha and Ankara”

A recent defeat of the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) by the country’s army troops in a battle over Syria’s second largest city, Aleppo, was a “disaster” for Turkey and Qatar, the western media said.

The FSA armed rebels have sustained a strategic defeat in their attempt to capture Syria’s Aleppo, World Tribune reported.

The armed rebels supported by Qatar and Turkey demonstrated significant deficiencies in their failure to capture Aleppo in October, World Tribune quoted Western diplomatic sources as saying on Sunday.

The sources said some 1,000 armed rebels, equipped with pickup trucks, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles, advanced towards central Aleppo from several directions on October 25. “But within 24 hours, the rebels met fierce resistance,” they added.

“Turkey had been training and equipping the rebels for this battle, and it was a disaster,” the newspaper cited a diplomat as saying.

“Turkey has some hard decisions to make over the next few weeks, particularly whether to keep 250,000 soldiers along the Syrian border throughout the winter,” it quoted another diplomat as saying.

According to the World Tribune, the sources also said that the defeat of Ankara and Doha could lead to a reassessment of unrests in Syria.

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011 with organized attacks by well-armed gangs against Syrian police forces and border guards being reported across the country.

Hundreds of people, including members of the security forces, have been killed, when some protest rallies turned into armed clashes. The government blames outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorist groups for the deaths, stressing that the unrest is being orchestrated from abroad.

Turkey along with the US, Saudi Arabia and Qatar have been supporting terrorists and rebel groups in Syria and have practically brought a UN peace initiative into failure to bring President Assad’s government into collapse.

Opposition activists who several months ago said the rebels were running out of ammunition said in May that the flow of weapons – most bought on the black market in neighboring countries or from elements of the Syrian military in the past – has significantly increased after a decision by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other Persian Gulf states to provide millions of dollars in funding each month.