Local reports suggest that 5-7 Brits were admitted to a field hospital in the Omar oil field, with two very serious. In the same incident the result of a Daesh attack in Sha’afa, a YPG soldier, possibly female, was killed. With that number of casualties from a single ATGM it looks like an UKSF vehicle (a Bushmaster Escapade?) was hit, similar to French SF Aravis near Raqqa in 2017. The Bushmaster has been in service with British Special Forces since 2008, when 24 were purchased for use by the 22nd Special Air Service (22 SAS) in Iraq, with the Escapade being an upgraded version. Sha’afa was the location of a Coalition airstrike last November that apparently killed 60 civilians and is in the area east of the Euphrates, south of Deir, where Daesh are probably making their last stand. That is unless, like Raqqa, Pindostan lets a large convoy of them out to say al-Tanf. The Syrians/Iraqis estimate in the order of 1500-2000 are in the pocket currently under assault from an invigorated SDF effort, the SAA crossing the river and Iraqi units from over the border.
– JohninMK, Craig Murray Comments
Two British Service Members Were Seriously Injured By Isis In Euphrates Valley
South Front, Jan 6 2019
Two British SOF soldiers have been seriously injured during clashes with Daesh5 in the middle Euphrates River Valley in eastern Syria, the Daily Mirror newspaper reported at the late hours of Jan 5. According to the available details, the British service members where hit with an anti-tank guided missile fired by Daesh when they were operating around the town of al-Shaafah along with Kurdish fighters. Earlier reports said that most of the town have been liberated from Daesh. An SDF spox told Rudaw:
Due to a smart missile attack by Daesh, a fighter of the YPG was killed and another wounded, in addition to two British soldiers.
The British soldiers were reportedly airlifted from the battlefield by Pindo forces and moved to a medical point to receive treatment. The British media is speculating that the two were members of the SAS. Last March, two British and Pindo soldiers were killed when an IED exploded inside of their vehicle in the SDF-held part of northern Aleppo. No one claimed the attack and the Pindo coalition never provided any details about the incident. This incident will likely have a direct impact on the Pindo decision to withdraw its troops from Syria. Recent reports suggest that Faschingstein is already planning to manipulate the decision in order to maintain a military presence of some sort in the war-torn country.
https://twitter.com/VanessaBeeley/status/1081824958844755968
Niqnaq 
One Comment
Hi Rowan, and happy new year!
I have another off-topic post 🙂
http://bostonreview.net/literature-culture-global-justice/arundhati-roy-avni-sejpal-challenging-“post-”-postcolonialism
In this passage:
“The freer global capital becomes, the harder national borders become. Colonialism needed to move large populations of people—slaves and indentured labor—to work in mines and on plantations. Now the new dispensation needs to keep people in place and move the money—so the new formula is free capital, caged labor. How else are you going to drive down wages and increase profit margins? Profit is the only constant. And it has worked to a point. But now capitalism’s wars for resources and strategic power (otherwise known as “just wars”) have destroyed whole countries and created huge populations of war refugees who are breaching borders. The specter of an endless flow of unwanted immigrants with the wrong skin color or the wrong religion is now being used to rally fascists and ethno-nationalists across the world. That candle is burning at both ends and down the middle, too. It cannot all be laid at the door of resource-plundering or strategic thinking. Eventually it develops a momentum and a logic of its own.”
I was thinking, perhaps that is why, we have FB, twitter, and other social media, which make users highly addictive.