Sunday 9 June 2013

An Israeli Truck Reportedly Captured From The Syrian Opposition Reappears in Qusayr

Late last month there were a number of reports from Lebanese and Syria television of a truck reportedly captured from opposition forces around Qusayr that was claimed to be Israeli in origin, shown in the below video


The trucks were marked with the initials of the Israeli prison service, as seen below


An Israel Defense Forces spokesman told the Times of Israel that "based on the identification number seen in footage of the vehicle, the jeep had belonged to the now-defunct South Lebanon Army, and had been out of commission for more than a decade," adding the report was "crude propaganda."

Looking through images from the recently captured Qusayr one stood out, captioned "Forces loyal to Syria's President Bashar al-Assad ride on a truck in Qusair, after the Syrian army took control of the city from rebel fighters, June 5, 2013. Syrian government forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies seized control of the border town of Qusair on Wednesday, a severe setback to rebel fighters battling to overthrow Assad."


To me this appeared to be the same type of truck reportedly captured by the Syrian Army back in May, but I then discovered something else.  Here's the number plate on the above photo


Here's the number plate of the truck captured in May



It seems pretty clear both number plates read 669491, so it's seems it's the same vehicle, and again begs the question of whether this truck was actually seized by Hezbollah from the South Lebanon Army and used for propaganda purposes.  This is also important when footage shown on Syrian and Lebanon TV claims to show Israeli weapons supposedly captured in Qusayr.

Related posts
Video Shows Opposition Forces And Wounded Retreating From Qusayr
Reinforcements And A Senior Free Syrian Army Member Arrive In Qusayr
Abu Sakkar Joins Mounting Casualties From The Fighting in Qusayr
Syrian Opposition Fighters (Including Abu Sakkar) Appear In A Video From Central Qusayr

2 comments:

  1. The markings on the back are not of the prison service. They do not use vehicles like this. The marking Shin Bet and Shin Peh denote what speed the vehicle is allowed to travel in urban and open terrain; Shetakh banui and shetakh patuakh. You'll note the number corresponding to either data has been eroded.

    It is probably an SLA vehicle brought along with Hezbollah for propaganda purposes.

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  2. I'm fairly confident it's an armored Sufa jeep in an outdated style.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIL_Storm#Armoured_version

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