The Syrian military claimed to have taken full control of Qara in the Qalamoun region and to have killed a “large number of terrorists.” The Al Nusrah Front withdrew from Qara, but activists from Al Nusrah and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham say they will return. At least 68 regime soldiers were reportedly killed in the Nov. 17 explosion at the Harasta base in Reef Dimashq. ISIS continued to clash with regime forces near the 80th brigade base in Aleppo. A sharia court ordered that the crossing between rebel and regime-occupied Aleppo be open two hours a day and only for “humanitarian cases.” A rebel commander in the Yarmouk camp in Damascus was assassinated. The bodies of four rebels, including a leader, were found in Idlib after a sharia court ordered the men’s execution. The patriarch of the Melkite Greek Catholic church in Syria urged Christians to remain; some 450,000 have been displaced by the war. The OPCW is considering the possibility of destroying Syria’s chemical weapons at sea. A former German footballer turned jihadist who had trained in Pakistan died fighting for al Qaeda forces in Syria.
