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Powerful Explosions Shake Damascus As Israel Attacks Syria For Second Time In Past Week
Citizens in Syria's capital woke up early on Sunday to a series of powerful explosions shaking the outskirts of Damascus, sending massive fireballs into the night sky. Preliminary reports that this was an Israeli attack were subsequently confirmed by NBC citing a senior US official who said Israeli jets had bombed a military research center near of Damascus. This would be the second Israeli attack on Syrian territory in the past week, following US media reports that Israel targeted a weapons shipment to the militant group Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon overnight Thursday to Friday, although the Jewish state has refused to confirm or deny the bombing. As RT further reports, during the attack, one Israeli jet was reportedly shot down by Syria's Air Force, according to Hezbollah's Manar TV channel, citing security sources in Damascus. This has yet to be confirmed through official channels although if accurate one expects Syrian media to promptly confirm with video evidence.
Video coverage of tonight's bombing has already appeared on Youtube:
More from RT:
Israel declined to comment on the attack, but the blasts occurred a day after an Israeli official said his country had carried out an air strike targeting a consignment of missiles in Syria intended for the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
One of the sites hit on Sunday, the Jamraya military research centre, was also targeted by Israel in January.
"The new Israeli attack is an attempt to raise the morale of the terrorist groups which have been reeling from strikes by our noble army," Syrian television said, referring to recent offensives by President Bashar al-Assad's forces against rebels.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights quoted eyewitnesses in the area as saying they saw jets in the sky at the time of the explosions.
It said the blasts hit Jamraya as well as a nearby ammunition depot. Other activists said a missile brigade and two Republican Guard battalions may also have been targeted in the heavily militarised area just north of Damascus.
According to AFP, the previous attack destroyed surface-to-air missiles recently delivered by Russia that were being stored at Damascus airport, and would be delivered to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Stratfor adds the following perspective:
Israeli officials have privately stressed that Israel maintains its own specific redlines in the Syrian conflict and that despite U.S. President Barack Obama's reported stance, the use of chemical weapons against rebels is not one of them. Specifically, Israeli officials have stressed that they will not tolerate transfers of chemical weapons, ballistic missiles, advanced air-defense systems or sophisticated anti-ship missiles to Hezbollah -- or jihadist seizures of such weapons.
Over the past months, the Syrian regime has also effectively withdrawn its forces from the Golan Heights in order to use them against the rebel threat encroaching on Damascus. This has heightened Israeli concern that jihadists will take advantage of the security vacuum in the Golan Heights to begin staging attacks against Israeli units in the area. Israel has said such action will not be tolerated.
Countries near Syria are already feeling the effects of the war. A massive influx of refugees is adding further stress to the already unstable economies of Lebanon and Jordan, and earlier this week a Turkish guard was killed in a border dispute with armed Syrians. Iraq is seeing increased jihadist activity linked to the Syrian conflict. As the conflict in Syria continues to rage, the spillover effects from the civil war will continue to manifest themselves.
It was not immediately known what the "defensive" purpose of tonight's offensive was, which supposedly targeted a military research base, nor was it clear if Syria will ultimately declare a state of war with Israel following the past week's dramatic escalation in hostilities.
Most importantly, it is not known if following last week's provocative language out of the White House if this is precisely the event sought by the Obama administration to finally give the green light to a joint military operation targeting Syria.
The last question is how Russia responds, whether it remains neutral, or comes to the support of president Assad and defends its military naval assets on the Syrian coast.
While speculation a US-led escalation is ripe, the lack of any US naval support (as shown by Stratfor's naval update map from May 2) off the coast of Syria likely makes any immediate war is hardly likely, or that Israel will be on its own for at least the foreseeable future.
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Happy Easter to the million or so Orthodox Christians in Syria! Perhaps the fireworks was Israel celebrating the 1980th anniversary of killing your King and Your God.
Being that man is hellbent on destroying himself,and there is nothing I can say or do to prevent this, and being it is spring, I present vertical growing techniques for gardens .
These techniques can be used by Christian, Jews and Moslems alike !!!
http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/vertical-gardening-zm0z10zhun.aspx?newsletter=1&utm_content=05.03.13+GFSS&utm_campaign=2013+GFSS&utm_source=iPost&utm_medium=email#axzz2SQjcH3vD
We have been using the wire cages for tomatoes for generations. We started using the livestock fencing (available at Tractor Supply) about 4 years ago with excellent results.
I suspect that anything Israel wants to blow up over there is probably OK with this administration.
Israeli-Iranian proxy war in Syria is coming out of the shadows during this weekend as Israel bombs Hezbollah targets in Syria, set to mobilize ground forces confronting the recent Iranian deployment near the Israeli-Lebanese-Syrian border triangle, following Obama's declaration that US boots on the ground in Syria are unlikely. Detailed analysis of the crisis in this link: http://essential-intelligence-network.blogspot.com/2013/05/escalation-in-syria-coming-out-of.html
Good grief - one entire thread spent cat-fighting over religion and ethnicity and not one mention of the key point in the article - the Israelis hit and destroyed a "military Research Center". Any bets on what was being "researched"? My guess is that whatever was destroyed would have eventually made its way to what is now being called "The Homeland" by our keepers. Thank you IDF.
Rumor has it this was a pressure cooker factory!
And a special-ops backpack factory
Having worked in an American military research center at one point, I suggest they mostly bullshitted, played pinochle and worked on G jobs like their old lawn mower restoration.
And so it begins...
the beginning of the end?
the end of the beginning?
While there is no doubt the world is a tinderbox, these matches are getting awful close now...every rock I look under I see trouble.
The anti-jew speech is balanced out by the anti-muslim speech.
Even though sweeping generalizations are worthless, it's all free speech. At least, for now, we still have that.
Islam, the boil on gods' butt.
jews are god's cancer and christians are god's diabetes.
Who is god's AMA and FDA? Does She have insurance?
she's got obamacare. the death panel is reviewing her case. there is still some money left on her policy so she will be kept on life support a while longer.
Israel's MO:
1. It all started when he hit me back
2. Let's you and him fight
Why do you hate Jews so much, Adolph errrr..... Barak?
I was hoping that the Israelis bombed the biggest America hating terrorist there is......on 1600 PA Ave.
Why would they hit their global headquarters?
dirty ammo used in the strike
http://india.shafaqna.com/shafaq/item/8909-report-israel-using-depleted-...
If that so (which is likely to be), hope the wind blows towards the bombers.
Some men's supidity is infinite.
debug, DU isn't radioactive, it is dense, useless in a bomb or rocket or missile. Really really good in a KE weapon like APDS so all of the 1/2MV**2 is concentrated in a 25 mm diameter at point of impact. "Russians report..."
so, pussy junksta':
- Ned
You don't have the foggiest fucking idea what you're talking about.
"The larger portion of the total explosive yield in this design comes from the final fission stage fueled by 238U, producing enormous amounts of radioactive fission products. For example, an estimated 77% of the 10.4-megaton yield of the Ivy Mike thermonuclear test in 1952 came from fast fission of the depleted uranium tamper. Because depleted uranium has no critical mass, it can be added to thermonuclear bombs in almost unlimited quantity. The Soviet Union's test of the "Tsar Bomba" in 1961 produced "only" 60 megatons of explosive power, over 90% of which came from fusion, because the 238U final stage had been replaced with lead. Had 238U been used instead, the yield of the "Tsar Bomba" could have been well-above 100 megatons, and it would have produced nuclear fallout equivalent to one third of the global total that had been produced up to that time."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium-238
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2314357/Katrina-Brown-Has-Iraq-war-nurse-fatally-poisoned-radioactive-dust-bombs.html
It seems the danger is being in the presence upon impact of DU munitions.
"How do the troops handle the shit?"
I met an ex-airforce guy without a thyroid on drugs for the rest of his life. I could ask him for you if you like? He reckoned it was the DU bombs he loaded on jets in Gulf War I. So there is plenty of evidence from the first Ziocon war of the effects of this substance. There's also plenty of deformed babies in Iraq to prove it. It's not the radioactivity actually, it's the very fine dust which is highly poisonous. Uranium is also poisonous, a genuine chemical weapon, which is topical don't you think?... I mean now that the Syrian rebels are doing Sarin gas false flag attacks too, chemical weapons are in the news again.
Israel will prevail, regardless.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.
Francis mouth frothing to being in 3....2....1
ZH is beginning to look like Alex Jones' and his InfoJihad warriors; populated ever increasingly by Jew and Israel haters.
Hezbollah is actually a philanthropist group who only want to live in peace.