Tag Archives: Damascus

Israeli Jet Strike Near Damascus Sends Fireball Over City “Russia Today”: Israeli bombardment on Damascus, killing more than 300 Syrian soldiers

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Syria threatened retaliation against Israel after an aerial strike on the outskirts of caused explosions that rocked the capital, increasing the risk of a wider regional conflict.

An Iron Dome short-range missile defence system stands near the northern Israeli city of Haifa on May 5, 2013. Syria deployed rocket batteries directed toward Israel, the pro-government Damas Post website said, and the Israeli army said two Iron Dome missile defense batteries were deployed in the north. Photographer: Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images

Israel didn’t confirm involvement in the assault yesterday. Its military also carried out an airstrike in Syria on May 3, The Associated Press reported, citing unidentified Israeli officials who said the attack targeted a shipment of missiles thought to be bound for Hezbollah militants in Lebanon.

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Fayssal Mekdad told CNN the airstrikes were a “declaration of war” and that the government would retaliate in its own time. Information Minister Omran al- Zoubi said on state TV that Syria would use “any means” to protect its people. He said the overnight strike hit a military research center in Jamraya, northwest of Damascus. Syria deployed rocket batteries directed toward Israel, the pro- government Damas Post website said.

Israeli officials say Syria’s two-year-old civil war has increased the threat that Hezbollah or other militant groups will obtain weapons from the country and turn them on Israel. The Jewish state has repeatedly clashed with Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed organization classified as terrorist by Israel and the U.S., though there has been little conflict between them since Israel’s most recent invasion of Lebanon in 2006.

Rocket Batteries

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t address the attacks in opening remarks to his weekly Cabinet session yesterday. The Israeli leader did delay a scheduled trip toChina for at least two hours to convene his inner security Cabinet. The Israeli army said two Iron Dome missile defense batteries were stationed in the north.

President Bashar al-Assad’s government is fighting a rebel movement backed by the U.S. and most European and Arab countries that has gained control in several parts of the country. Hezbollah and Iran are supporting Assad in the conflict.

The attacks had little impact on Israel financial markets. The benchmark stock index, which fell 0.1 percent yesterday, was little changed as of 10:40 a.m. today. While benchmark bond prices fell yesterday, that was largely driven by a cut in Israel’s credit rating at Standard & Poor’s.

‘Calculated Risk’

Jonathan Spyer, a political scientist at the , Israel, said the Jewish state was betting it could strike because Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is too mired in his own civil war to carry out the threatened reprisals.

“Israel is taking a calculated risk that Assad, Iran and Hezbollah are right now fighting a war against the Syrian rebels and probably don’t want to open up a second front against a far more formidable enemy,” Spyer said by telephone. “If Israel has now done this twice with air strikes within the last 48 hours, its ‘shadow conflict’ with Iran is no longer in the shadows.”

Israel has threatened military strikes on Iran to curb its nuclear program before it becomes capable of making atomic bombs, if diplomatic efforts backed by the U.S. to achieve the same end aren’t successful. Israeli officials say Hezbollah has multiplied its weapons stocks since 2006 and obtained more sophisticated missiles with a greater range.

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“Russia Today”: Israeli bombardment on Damascus, killing more than 300 Syrian soldiers

Syrian sources said local site “Russia Today”, who asked not to be identified, said the Israeli bombardment targeted two brigades, 104 and 105 officers of the Republican Guard and deployed in areas Jmraiya and Kudsia and important patient in Damascus.

Also targeted bombing, which occurred on Sunday May 5 ammunition depot belonging to the band 14 in the same area, as well as targeting the center of research in Jmraiya.

 The source said it had killed nearly 300 people, mostly soldiers, and the number of wounded Distributors in sympathy hospitals and 601 military and university-Assad, as well as the in industrious Hospital.

This did not issue any official statement yet about what happened and the number of victims, as we could not verify the validity of this information from any Syrian official source.

DAILY NEWS HEADLINES

Syria: Israeli attack equals declaration of war. Iron Domes at Haifa and Safed

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Iron Dome missile interceptor on the Golan

Iron Dome missile interceptor on the Golan

‘s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad said Sunday, May 5, that the strike at Syria overnight represented a “declaration of war” by . Russian and Iranian media earlier predicted full-scale Middle East hostilities involving Israel erupting in the coming hours, in the wake of Israel’s renewed strikes against Iranian missiles bound for Hizballah and other targets around Damascus. Russian sources reported rumors that President Bashar Assad was on the point of declaring war on Israel.

Russia Today claimed that an Israeli rocket strike Sunday caused heavy Syrian casualties – according to rumors, at least 300 members of the Syrian Army’s 501st Unit dead and hundreds filling four Damascus hospitals. DEBKAfile: If this is confirmed, then the unit which operates the chemical weapon facility at the district north of Damascus at the foot of Mt. Qassioun was hit. Israel’s security cabinet holds emergency session.

The same Russian source reported that Syrian security forces cordoned off the sites of the explosions against entry. Residents reported after the blasts that the ground moved with the force of a 4 magnitude earthquake.

Shortly after the Israel attacks in the Damascus area Sunday, the IDF posted additional Iron Dome anti-missile batteries in Haifa and Safed to defend those northern towns against incoming Syrian and Hizballah rockets.

Low-ranking Syrian and Iranian officials responded to the Israeli attacks on Syria: Deputy Information minister His Al-Yiftah commented by saying that “a new foreign element had entered the Syrian conflict overnight and this would cause war.”

In Tehran, an official condemned “Israeli aggression on Syria and accused Israel of fomenting instability and ethnic discord in the region. The commander of the ground forces asked if the war was not about to burst out of Syria’s borders, without answering the question.
An Israeli official confirmed to AFP that Israeli had Sunday conducted a second round of strikes in three days on advanced weapons including Iranian F-110 weapons bound for Hizballah in transit at Damascus international airport. Syrian TV reported only an attack on the Jamraya military research center just north of Damascus. This was the same facility which Israeli planes attacked in January.

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WW3 coming closer Israel jets striking targets in Syria Eyewitnesses: Drops ‘Nuclear-Type’ Bomb On Damascus, 2 Israeli Jets Shot Down, Assad To Declare War On Israel

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Israeli troops in combat gear on Golan border

Israeli military activity is reported in  Saturday, May 4 and not just over .
US sources said earlier warplanes had struck targets in Syria including a chemical weapons depot outside Damascus, firing missiles remotely from Lebanese air space and starting Friday and continuing up until early Saturday, May 3. An Israeli spokesman confirmed only an air strike in Syria against a shipment of long-range surface missiles.
The latest reports from Lebanon point to expanding Israeli military activity inside Lebanon as well.
They describe Israeli warplanes as flying “at a medium altitude over the Eastern and Western Mountain ranges of the Beqaa Valley.”  debkafile: Hizballah strongholds are located in this region which is close to the Syrian border. Other warplanes were described as heading north over Beirut.

One Lebanese source claimed Israeli ground troops had descended from the Mt. Dov-Hermon range, crossed the Lebanese border and entered the region.
None of these reports are confirmed by Israel, Lebanon or Syria. But debkafile notes that if Israeli troops have indeed penetrated Lebanon to a depth of 5-7 kilometers and reached the Shebaa Farms, they have taken up positions opposite the 30 Syrian Shiite villages guarded by incoming Iranian elite Basij militiamen.

debkafile reported exclusively Friday that thousands of Basij militiamen had just been airlifted from Iran to Syria, establishing an Iranian military presence opposite Israel from Syria as well as Lebanon. They joined a comparable number of Hizballah militiamen fighting for the Bashar regime.

Given the rush of adverse military developments across Israel’s northern borders, its operations in Syria and Lebanon are expected to continue and even expand.
This is also indicated by last week’s mobilization of thousands of reservists for an event termed by the IDF spokesman “a military exercise” beginning Sunday, May 5 along Israel’s borders with Syria and Lebanon.

The spokesman was clearly trying to misdirect attention from Israel’s preparations for an important military operation by announcing a routine drill.
debkafile adds: The initial claim by Syria, Iran and Hizballah of ignorance of any Israeli action is unlikely to hold up for long. They might keep up the act if the Israeli strike turned out to be a one-off against a single target – the picture the “Israeli official” tried to present after the event.
But if there is more to come, Bashar Assad, Ali Khamenei and Hassan Nasrallah will not let Israel go unchallenged. This threesome is undoubtedly on the phone at this moment working on their response.

Some of the earlier reports by US media claimed Israeli jets were seen Saturday before dawn circling over Assad’s presidential compound in Damascus before moving on to target a weapons site. The Israeli jets reportedly received fire but returned to base unscathed.

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Eyewitnesses: Israel Drops ‘Nuclear-Type’ Bomb On Damascus, 2 Israeli Jets Shot Down, Assad To Declare War On Israel

  • 3:12 pm NZT] RT is citing a local journalist reporting 300 people dead and a total of 4 blasts striking the area.
  • [3:04 pm NZT] The BBC is currently playing a phone interview to a local journalist(?) of people experiencing a minor earthquake before the blast. In his words this could indicate an underground structure being attacked. This is not confirmed – Just the latest on BBC news

Israeli media: 2 warplanes lost over  in sorties early Sunday morning.  Major bombing missions on  regime

From Occupy Congress:

BREAKING: Eye witnesses in capital city of  say  military has dropped nuclear-type bomb.

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Assad “to declare war” on Israel following fresh airstrikes

Reports suggest that Syria’s embattled dictator, Bashar al-Assad, is shortly set to declare war on Israel after interventions against the regime

Following evidence of chemical warfare and an increasinly reticent US position, Israel has in recent days taken widely reported steps to neutralise threats emanating from within civil war-torn Syria.

While strikes from Lebanese airspace this weekend are not thought to have been on chemical weapons caches, the recent Israeli intelligence regarding the use of such weaponry is thought to have spurred on a round of strikes, including the latest just hours ago.

The Syrian state news agency SANA, citing initial reports, said early Sunday that Israeli missiles struck a military research center near the capital Damascus.

Syrian state television has reported that a major strike on an ammunition depot in Qassiyoun mountain shook Damascus, while Hezbollah’s Al-Manar station claimed the explosion may have been a downed Israeli jet.

Rumours are surfacing online that following the latest volley of attacks on the Syrian regime, President Bashar al-Assad will soon officially declare war on Israel,

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WORLD WEEKEND NEWS NEW UPDATES

middle east US troops sent to Jordan to counter Syrian attack on kingdom Whole of Syria has become a battlefield, says church leader

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US troops sent to Jordan to counter attack on kingdom

US 1st Armored Division

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced Wednesday, April 17, that 200 troops of the US 1st Armored Division had been ordered to deploy in Jordan. DEBKAfile’s military sources report that they are being sent on arrival to the north and ranged on the Jordanian-Syrian border.
According to the Pentagon statement, the force will give the the ability to “potentially form a joint task force for military operations, if ordered.”

The new deployment will include communications and intelligence specialists, who will assist the Jordanians and “be ready for military action” if President Barack Obama orders it.

Small US units, mainly special forces and special groups trained for chemical warfare, have been have been quietly present in Jordan for the past year. The new deployment makes the US military presence official.
DEBKAfile’s Washington sources disclose that President Obama ordered the new deployment to the kingdom when he discovered that Syrian President Bashar Assad was about to publicly and sharply condemn Jordan’s King Abdullah in a special Syrian TV broadcast Wednesday night and accuse him of responsibility for sending hundreds of armed fighters into Syria to oppose the regime.
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Whole of Syria has become a battlefield, says church leader

Syrian refugees in (Photo: Aid to the Church in Need)

The head of an ancient Middle Eastern Church has described how “the whole of Syria has become a battlefield” and has appealed to world leaders to intervene in a bid to stop the fighting.

In a statement, Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch Gregorios III Laham says that the country’s “suffering has gone beyond all bounds” and that the conflict “has mown down thousands and thousands” of people – both civilians and military.

The Damascus-based patriarch estimates that, since the conflict broke out two years ago, up to 400,000 Syrian Christians – possibly more than 25 per cent of the total – are either displaced within the country or have fled abroad.

In the statement, which was sent on Monday to Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need, Patriarch Gregorios reports that since early 2011 more than 1,000 Christians have been killed, that “entire villages have been cleared of their Christian inhabitants” and that more than 40 churches and other Christian centres (schools, orphanages and care homes) lie damaged or destroyed.

He states that key to the country’s problems are chaos and insecurity, as well as an influx of “fundamentalist Islamists”.

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The patriarch declares that the threat to Christianity in Syria has wider implications for the religion’s future in the region because for decades the country has provided a refuge for faithful from Lebanon, Iraq and elsewhere.

He states that the conflict poses a severe threat to Muslims, pitting one Islamic tradition against another.

Patriarch Gregorios believes that, in spite of the worsening violence, peace remains possible and, in his statement, calls for action from leaders of Arab nations, Europe, the Americas, world organisations and Nobel Peace Prize winners.

He states: “We are sure that, despite our woes, all [of us] Syrians – government, political parties, Sunni and Shia Muslims, Alawites, Christians and Druze – are capable of engaging in dialogue.”

Saying that “there is no safe place left in Syria”, he adds: “The whole of Syria has become a battlefield… Every aspect of democracy, human rights, freedom, secularism and citizenship is lost from view and no-one cares.”

He states: “Suffering has gone beyond all bounds. The crisis has mown down thousands upon thousands of soldiers, opponents, civilians, men, women, children, Muslim sheikhs and Christian priests.”

Historic Damascus synagogue looted and burned

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Rebels, Assad forces trade blame for destruction of ancient synagogue built atop a cave used by prophet Elijah.

Jobar synagogue in Damascus.

Jobar synagogue in Damascus. Photo: YouTube Screenshot

The 2,000-year-old Jobar Synagogue in the Syrian capital of Damascus was looted and burned to the ground.

The Syrian army loyal to President Bashar Assad and rebel forces are blaming each other for the destruction of the historic synagogue, according to reports on Sunday.

The rebels said the Syrian government looted the synagogue before burning it to the ground, Israel Radio reported Sunday.

The government said the rebels burned the synagogue and that so-called Zionist agents stole its historic religious items in an operation that had been planned for several weeks, the Arabic Al-Manar Television reported, citing the Arabic Syria Truth website.

The synagogue, one of the oldest in the world, was damaged earlier this month by mortars reportedly fired by Syrian government forces. A video posted online by the Syrian opposition shows extensive damage done to the outside of the synagogue

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Saudi heavy weapons supply to Syrian rebels breaks up Arab summit in uproar Joint US, NATO, Israeli strike awaits Syria

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The heavy MLRS rocket launcher in Syrian rebel hands

The heavy MLRS rocket launcher in Syrian rebel hands

Syrian rebels fighting for control of the Syria’s biggest town, , have obtained their first heavy weapons – 220-mm MLRS rocket launchers – through a large-scale supply operation run by Saudi intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, according toDEBKAfile’s exclusive intelligence sources.

His agents scoured the Balkans nations of Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo and for large wads of cash snapped up Russian-made MLRS (Smerch) and Hurricane 9K57 launchers capable of firing scores of 220-mm rockets to a distance of 70 kilometers.
The hope to expedite the rebel capture of the big Syrian Nairab air base attached to Aleppo’s international air port. The Saudi prince has personally taken the Nairab battle under his wing, convinced that it is the key to the conquest of Aleppo, once Syria’s national commercial and population center, after more than a year’s impasse in the battle for its control.
The fall of this air base would also substantially reduce the big Iranian and Russian airlifts to Assad’s army.

Russia brings down its cargo planes loaded with weapons and replacement parts for the Syrian army at Nairab after the air facilities around Damascus were targeted by rebel fire. Moscow has since warned the rebels that if they attack incoming or outgoing Russian planes at Nairab, Russian special forces will come in to wipe out their strength around the base and take over its protection themselves.

Of late, Russian and Iranian arms lifts to Nairab were doubled, after rebels seized many Alawite villages in the Aleppo and Idlib regions of .

Members of Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect, their inhabitants, mainly women and children, have been fleeing en masse from their homes in fear of rebel retribution. They are making for the coastal towns of and which are still under regime control.
The question is for how long. In the third week of March, Russian warships stopped docking at the naval port of Tartus after finding its piers and facilities crowded with Alawite refugees who came up to the Russian seamen begging for food, water and medical aid.
From March 21, Russian warships on the Mediterranean were ordered to avoid Tartus and relocate their visits to Lebanon’s Beirut port.

The Saudi operation for shipping heavy rocket launchers from the Balkans to Aleppo is complicated.

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Joint US, NATO, Israeli strike awaits Syria

Syrian soldiers kitted up for chemical warfare
Syrian soldiers kitted up for chemical warfare

, US President Barack Obama struck a deal with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu for military action against Syrian chemical weapons. The new issue will flesh out that decision with exclusive revelations on NATO’s role in setting up the expedition, its participants, targets and ramifications, including likely responses by Moscow and Tehran.
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