Everything Syria ... August 29, 2012

Both the IndependentUK and TheGuardianUK have covered yesterday's events.  TheGuardian is also running a live report as and when fresh news comes in.

Robert Fisk writes:
The massacre town of Daraya is a place of ghosts and questions. It echoed with the roar of mortar explosions and the crackle of gunfire yesterday, its few returning citizens talking of death, assault, foreign "terrorists", and its cemetery of slaughter haunted by snipers.
The men and women to whom we could talk, two of whom had lost loved ones on Daraya's day of infamy four days ago, told a story different from the version that has been repeated around the world: theirs was a tale of hostage-taking by the Free Syria Army and desperate prisoner-exchange negotiations between the armed opponents of the regime and the Syrian army, before President Bashar al-Assad's government forces stormed into the town to seize it back from rebel control......

from livefeed 28m ago at 11.38 amToronto time  Assault on Taftanaz military airport
Our colleague Mona Mahmood has interviewed via Skype Tamiem al-Shami, a member of Ahrah al-Sham brigade in Idlib that he says carried out the assault on the Taftanaz military base that led to the destruction of several helicopters. He emphasised that the brigade is not part of the Free Syrian Army. Al-Shami said:

We are Ahrar al-Sham brigades. These are armed independent brigades. I'm a defected officer of the Syrian army ...We are revolutionary brigade with religious Islamic doctrine and acting according to Islamic Sharia ...We are cooperating with all revolutionary forces on the ground including the FSA ...
We had been planning to attack Taftanaz base for a long time because of its importance to the Syrian army. This base covers more than 150km of area. It was a big strategic target for Ahrar al-Sham. We had been collecting data and intelligence about the target for a long time. There was a big movement of defectors from inside the base. We were able to make use of the information provided by these defectors.....