{"id":38043,"date":"2013-04-29T03:00:22","date_gmt":"2013-04-29T03:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/syria_al-qaedas_battle_for_control_of_assads_chemical_weapons_plant\/"},"modified":"2013-04-29T03:00:22","modified_gmt":"2013-04-29T03:00:22","slug":"syria_al-qaedas_battle_for_control_of_assads_chemical_weapons_plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=38043","title":{"rendered":"(Telegraph) Syria: Al-Qaeda&#39;s battle for control of Assad&#39;s chemical weapons plant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Set amid the rolling plains outside Aleppo, the town of al-Safira looks just like another vicious battleground in Syria&#8217;s civil war. On one side are lightly-armed rebels, on the other are government troops, and in between is a hotly-contested no-man&#8217;s land of bombed-out homes and burned-out military vehicles.<\/p>\n<p>The fight for al-Safira is no ordinary turf war, however, and the prize can be found behind the perimeter walls of the heavily-guarded military base on the edge of town. Inside what looks like a drab industrial estate is one of Syria&#8217;s main facilities for producing chemical weapons &#8211; and among its products is sarin, the lethal nerve gas that the regime is now feared to be deploying in its bid to cling to power.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/news\/worldnews\/middleeast\/syria\/10022753\/Syria-Al-Qaedas-battle-for-control-of-Assads-chemical-weapons-plant.html\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Set amid the rolling plains outside Aleppo, the town of al-Safira looks just like another vicious battleground in Syria&#8217;s civil war. On one side are lightly-armed rebels, on the other are government troops, and in between is a hotly-contested no-man&#8217;s<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=38043\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,40,50,209,199,144,203,151,95,556,148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-watch","category-economics-politics","category-international-news-commentary","category-americau-s-a","category-england-uk","category-foreign-relations","category-middle-east","category-politics-in-general","category-science-technology","category-syria","category-terrorism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=38043"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38043\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=38043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=38043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=38043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}