Syria Live: Assessing the Insurgency

Claimed footage of a "barrel bomb" that killed between 12 and 24 people in Saraqeb in Idlib Province on Saturday

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1655 GMT: Protest. A sudden demonstration in the Medhat Basha Souk in Old Damascus:

1625 GMT: Airstrike and Casualties. Graphic footage has been posted of the aftermath of the airstrike on the mainly-Kurdish village of Haddad in Hasaka Province (see 1203 GMT). Activists claim at least 16 people were killed.

1545 GMT: Car Bomb. Back from a Sunday break to find State media claiming a car bomb in Aleppo killed two people and wounded 18, including three State television journalists.

Shadi Helw, SANA's Aleppo correspondent, and cameramen Yahya Moussali and Ahmed Suleiman were among the wounded. Moussali was seriously hurt.

State news agency SANA said regime forces "intercepted terrorists driving a car bomb about 500 metres from a security headquarters and managed to kill one of the bombers before the other detonated the bomb".

1203 GMT: Clashes. Regime forces and aircraft have attacked insurgent-held areas in the predominantly Kurdish village of Hadad in Hasaka Province.

An activist in the area who spoke by phone said insurgents counted 12 dead, all civilians.

"There are plumes of black smoke rising over the town, with continuous army fire from ground and air attacks," said the activist. He asked to be identified by his nom de guerre Abu Qasem for security reasons.

1129 GMT: Regime Advance. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that regime troops have broken a months-long insurgent siege on two key military bases in Idlib Province, killing at least 21 opposition fighters.

"Regime forces managed to lift the siege on the Wadi Deif and Hamdiya military camps after the army went around the rebel fighters and attacked them from behind," the Observatory claimed.

The London-based organisation claimed that troops "now control two hilltops on either side of the Damascus-Aleppo international highway", with military trucks carrying materiel and soldiers passing through the area for the first time in months.

The area is in the countryside near the strategic town of Maaret al-Numan, which fell to insurgents last October. The opposition fighters then began blocking military supply routes north and to the nearby Wadi Deif and Hamdiya army bases after they seized the town, which lies on the Damascus-Aleppo highway.

0929 GMT: Insurgent Attack. Claimed footage of insurgents blowing up a regime tank in Idlib Province:

0719 GMT: Collapse of a Historic Mosque. Claimed footage of the destruction of the historic Omari mosque in Daraa:

0715 GMT: Insurgent Divisions. Syria Deeply tells the story of deadly fighting between insurgent factions over the arrest to arrest a man, affiliated with one of the factions, who is accused of leading a criminal gang that robs travellers.

0615 GMT: Casualties. The Local Coordination Committees claim that 115 people were killed on Saturday, including 32 in Idlib Province --- most of them in an airstrike on Saraqeb --- 26 in Aleppo Province, and 25 in Damascus and its suburbs.

The Violations Documentation Center reports 56,666 people killed since the beginning of the conflict in March 2011, an increase of 157 on Thursday. Of the dead, 44,948 are civilians, a rise of 87 from yesterday.

0525 GMT: Insurgents. All week we have been cautioning about the media's distortion of the factions within the insurgency, in particular, the exaggeration by most outlets of the Islamist Jabhat al-Nusra as a "branch of Al Qa'eda".

Analyst Thomas Pierret writes to remind us of other complexities --- in this case, the insurgents who have been receiving arms from the US, Britain, France, and Arab States:

I think there is an error in a couple of your posts on arms supplies to the Syrian rebels.

As you (correctly) stress it, one of the primary recipients of Croatian weapons in the South is the Dawn of Islam Brigade (Liwa' Fajr al-Islam).

However, contrary to what you mention, this group is not the one that joined the Salafi-Jihadi alliance established by Ahrar al-Sham (Ahrar al-Sham Movement, itself part of the Syrian Islamic Front, which overall has a weak, if not insignificant, presence in the province of Daraa).

The group that merged with Ahrar al-Sham is called in fact the Dawn Islamic Movement (Harakat al-Fajr al-Islamiyya).

The two "Fajr" groups are totally unrelated.

Liwa' Fajr al-Islam is mainstream, --- it displays Syrian flags and claims to be part of the FSA. Harakat al-Fajr has always adopted a strict Salafi-Jihadi rhetoric.

Pierret's valuable note reinforces our analysis that the Western strategy is to get the weapons to "moderate" groups, especially those linked to the Free Syrian Army. In this case, it is working.

At the same time, his information is a reminder --- a timely one, given this week's coverage --- of the challenge in assessing the insurgency without jumping to shallow, provocative, and sometimes counter-productive conclusions.