- Rebels in Jobar have been pictured using an iPad to aim shells
- Troops from the same area were filmed using a map application to guide shells onto regime forces three months ago
They say that necessity is the mother of all invention and need is never greater than at a time of war.
So that may account for the unconventional method being used by these Syrian rebels to aim mortar shells.
Members of the ‘Ansar Dimachk’ Brigade, which operates under the Free Syrian Army, were snapped on September 15 using the tablet computer to help fire a homemade mortar towards a battlefront in Jobar, a suburb of Damascus.
Twitter speculation suggests that the soldiers might be using a spirit level application to determine the angle of fire, a key measurement which affects how far the shell will travel.
In June, more tech-savvy troops from the same area were also filmed using maps on an iPad to aim weapons at Assad’s forces.
In the video soldiers can be seen setting up a mortar before turning on the Apple tablet in order to guide the ordinance to its chosen target.
It is not the first time during the Middle East’s Arab Spring that improvisation has been required in order to win battles.
In June 2011, during the siege of Misrata, Libyan rebels fighting the forces of Colonel Gaddafi set up workshops in order to manufacture homemade weapons including armoured vehicles, machine guns, and missile batteries.
Molotov cocktails, made by inserting a flaming rag into a bottle of petrol or another flammable liquid, were also used during the fighting.
Pieces of broken mirror were also placed on corners allowing rebels to watch for Gaddafi’s snipers without being shot.
In Syria Bashar al-Assad has said his country will hand over chemical weapons to the UN to be destroyed after a Russian peace plan was agreed by US Secretary of State John Kerry.
The agreement will put an end to American threats of military intervention for the time being.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has also said that leaders may need to be forced rather than urged to the negotiating table to hold a peace conference over Syria’s future.
Lavrov blames rebel leadership as being the main opposition to talks, though it is unclear how he would force them to attend.
After talks in Paris on Monday, French President Francois Hollande’s office said the three Western permanent members on the Security Council – the United States, Britain and France – agreed to seek a strong resolution that sets binding deadlines for the removal of Syria’s chemical weapons.
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