Mountain Falcons Brigade | |
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Liwa’ Suqour al-Jabal لواء صقور الجبل Participant in the Syrian Civil War |
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Logo of the Mountain Hawks Brigade |
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Active | September 2012–present |
Leaders | Capt. Hassan Haj Ali Lt. Col. Nasha'at Haj Ahmad |
Headquarters | Jabal Zawiya, Idlib Governorate, Syria |
Area of operations | |
Strength | 2,500 fighters (2016) (own claim) |
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The Mountain Falcons Brigade (Arabic: لواء صقور الجبل, translit. Liwa’ Suqour al-Jabal), formerly the Falcons of Mount Zawiya Brigade. is Saudi-sponsored Free Syrian Army rebel group operating in northwestern Syria. The group takes its name from the Zawiya Mountain in the Idlib Governorate.
In September 2012, a former Syrian Army captain Hassan Haj Ali, who defected in 2011, formed the Falcons of Mount Zawiya Brigade as a subunit of the Ahfad al-Rasul Brigade.
In early 2014 the Falcons of Mount Zawiya Brigade joined the Syria Revolutionaries Front but later left the SRF due to internal disputes. It was one of the founding members of the 5th Corps but it also became defunct. Since 2014 the group is supplied with BGM-71 TOW missiles from the CIA through Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey, and is one of the original and most prolific users of the missiles in Syria.
At the beginning of the Russian military intervention in Syria in October 2015, the headquarters of the Mountain Falcons Brigade was hit by 20 air-to-surface missiles from the Russian Air Force. 2 months later, The Suqour al-Jabal Brigade clashed with the newly founded Syrian Democratic Forces in the northern Aleppo Governorate, capturing a village from the Army of Revolutionaries. Suqour al-Jabal fighters then took down and burned the flags of the SDF and the Army of Revolutionaries while chanting "Allahu Akbar". The group also participated along with other Fatah Halab factions in the shelling of the Sheikh Maqsood neighborhood in Aleppo.