The town was also home to an Isis tank workshop. There was an extensive tunnel network underneath the town that the Isis militants had dug over the past two years, making the capture of Okeirbat especially difficult.
Isis positions were about 10 miles away from the town, according to the Russians. In the town itself, dull thuds of artillery could be heard at regular intervals. The Russians have portrayed the latest advance as entirely run by Syrian army units operating with Russian air cover, but in reality most of the fighting in Syria over the past few years has been led by Iranian-backed militias, with the Syrian army in disarray.įighting in the area was still ongoing, with an incoming mortar shell landing close to the Russian convoy as it drove towards Okeirbat. The complicated tangle of forces operating on the ground was evident at a dusty forward operating base outside Okeirbat, where the convoy stopped briefly, which appeared to be manned at least partly by irregular Russians who did not want to speak to the media. On arrival, the town was patrolled by what appeared to be Russian special forces soldiers armed with high-end equipment but no insignia. The convoy was accompanied by black-clad men from Assad’s feared secret police, the Mukhabarat, and pickup trucks mounted with rifles. On Friday, journalists were flown from the main Russian airbase near Latakia on the Mediterranean coast to an airfield east of Aleppo, and then taken in a convoy of armoured trucks on a five-hour journey along desolate roads to Okeirbat, past the war-destroyed shells of abandoned villages.
The trip has shown just how involved Russia is on the ground in Syria, with the country’s military police involved in securing a number of “de-escalation zones” where ceasefires between government forces and moderate opposition groups are in place. The Russians took a group of journalists to Okeirbat as the final leg of a four-day tour for press designed to showcase Moscow’s contribution to the war and the subsequent peacekeeping operation.
A Syrian government soldier stands guard outside what was a shariah court run by Isis in Okeirbat.
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