In June 2011, during the civil uprising phase of the Syrian Civil War, rebels seized the city of Jisr ash-Shughur, resulting in violent clashes with the Syrian security forces, including the military. The exact reasons of the fighting, the course of events, and the resulting destruction and deaths are disputed. The government claimed that it clashed with Islamist-leaning insurgents who had set up an ambush for security forces, while the Syrian opposition described the Jisr ash-Shughur clashes as crackdown against pro-democracy protesters, resulting in a mutiny among the soldiers and a large battle with many people being massacred by pro-government forces. The fighting in the city lasted from 4 June until 12 June 2011.
HINT:
In this Dossier
- ⭐ Core Definition: June 2011 Jisr ash-Shugur operation
- June 2011 Jisr ash-Shugur operation in the context of Syrian Insurgency
June 2011 Jisr ash-Shugur operation in the context of Syrian Insurgency
The early insurgency phase of the Syrian civil war lasted from late July 2011 to April 2012, and was associated with the rise of armed oppositional militias across Syria and the beginning of armed revolution against the Syrian Ba'athist regime. Though armed insurrection incidents began as early as June 2011 when rebels killed 120–140 Syrian security personnel, the beginning of organized insurgency is typically marked by the formation of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) on 29 July 2011, when a group of defected officers declared the establishment of the first organized oppositional military force. Composed of defected Syrian Armed Forces personnel, the rebel army aimed to remove Bashar al-Assad and his government from power.
This period of the war saw the initial civil uprising take on many of the characteristics of a civil war, according to several outside observers, including the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, as armed elements became better organized and began carrying out successful attacks in retaliation for the crackdown by the Syrian government on demonstrators and defectors.
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