Ammar Abdulhamid remarks on the rumors pouring out of Deraa:
The reports tell of a few defections from the ranks of the 5th Division mushrooming into a full-fledged mutiny, when few high-ranking officers decided that defecting is not enough and that they had a duty to protect the city and its unarmed residents from the vicious assault of pro-Assad troops making up the 4th Division and lead by none other than Maher Al-Assad, the brother of the titular president.
The reports do not stop here, but go on to tell of the capture or at least trapping of Maher al-Assad, and one Rustom Ghazali, the acting chief of political security assigned to deal with the protests in Deraa. Al Jazeera even aired eyewitness testimony confirming some aspects of this, while the Syrian opposition channel, Barada TV, seemed to endorse the reports as factual. Facebook chat groups are naturally abuzz at this stage.
Al Jazeera's lead story is on opposition groups gearing up for resistance. Rolling updates here.
The Dish 