WarSclerotic

Baby lightly injured after rocket falls near A… JPost – Defense.

    A three-month-old baby was lightly injured in her hand after one of two rockets fired at the Ashkelon Regional Council hit a car and caused it go up in flames on Wednesday evening.

Two further rockets were fired at the Eshkol Regional Council but no injuries or damage were reported.

‘PA silence over terror raises questions about statehood’
‘Iran cuts funding for Hamas due to Syria unrest’

Earlier on Wednesday night, one of two rockets that was fired from Gaza towards the Beersheba area was intercepted by the Iron Dome system. The other rocket landed in open land near the city.

Air raid sirens were heard throughout the city and no injuries or damage were reported.

In what appeared to be part of an IDF response to renewed rocket fire into Southern Israel earlier in the day, the IAF evening bombed an Islamic Jihad rocket cell in Gaza City on Wednesday evening. Palestinians reported one dead and several wounded.

At least seven rockets landed near Ashkelon and in Ofakim on Wednesday evening. The rockets were believed to be fired by Islamic Jihad which was avenging an Israel Air Force air strike earlier in the day in which a senior operative was killed, who the IDF said was planning attacks against Israel from the Sinai Peninsula.

Four rockets landed in the Eshkol Regional Council and another two struck open land near Ofakim shortly after another rocket fell in an open field north of the Gaza strip near Ashkelon. No one was injured in the strikes.

The IDF had prepared for the rocket fire following the air strike against the Islamic Jihad operative and canceled the “Breeza” Festival in Ashkelon that was scheduled for Wednesday night.

Defense officials said that the IDF would continue to strike at terror cells that it spotted preparing to fire rockets into Israel or against terrorists who it knew, according to intelligence information, were in the midst of planning attacks against Israel like it did on Wednesday morning.

“This could lead to another escalation in rocket fire but the IDF will not stand by as Israelis are attacked,” one official said.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report August 24, 2011, 10:17 PM (GMT+02:00)

Israel’s frontier with Egypt – once a peace border

Israel-Egyptian frontier units went on peak alert Wednesday night, Aug. 24, following specific intelligence that Palestinian Jihad Islami was preparing to launch another cross-border terrorist attack on Israel from Sinai.

Earlier Wednesday, Gen. Benny Gantz, Chief of Staff of Israel’s Defense Forces announced the IDF was no longer treating the Egyptian frontier as a border of peace in view of new perils. The new situation was exemplified by the terrorist attacks Palestinian gunmen launched from Egyptian Sinai on Aug. 8 killing eight Israeli civilians and injuring forty.
The IDF is forced to elevate the army’s Edom Division’s mission, said the general, from border defense to a more proactive offensive role, the warding off of cross-border attacks for which it will receive infusions of extra combat manpower, intelligence systems and weapons.
This is a radical change in military outlook. For three decades since concluding a peace treaty with Egypt, Israel regarded their common 200-kilometer border as safe and non-belligerent.
In recent months, the IDF has been obliged to start thinking in new terms.
debkafile‘s military sources report that the Edom Division’s officers will be provided with surveillance equipment for detecting threats taking shape inside Sinai and armored units for combating them.

The Edom Division is currently composed of two brigades, the 76th Military Engineering Battalion, two intelligence companies – for gathering field intelligence and electronic surveillance, the mixed male and female 33rd Infantry Brigade and the Special Forces Reserve unit.

Our sources report that this set p will be given “iron and intelligence teeth.” Tank units, armored infantry, airborne radar and early warning electronic capabilities will be strung the length of the Egyptian border.

The Aug. 18 attack on the Eilat highway revealed that Palestinian terrorists were playing hide and seek between the Gaza Strip and Egyptian Sinai, adding to volatility on both sides of the Egyptian border and putting a heavy strain on Israeli-Egyptian relations. Iran was pulling strings to aggravate the tension.

The expanded frontier force is designed to keep the situation under better control by addressing the new issues:

1.  The row over the killing of three Egyptian police officers in Sinai while Israeli was grappling with some 15 Palestinian gunmen has not subsided. The military rulers in Cairo were not appeased by Israel’s apology. The initial IDF probe released its first finding Wednesday, Aug. 24, confirming that the IDF had suspected Egyptian security personnel might be hurt in the heat of the firefight with the terrorists and tried as hard as possible to prevent this happening.
However, street protesters in Egypt continue to demand that Israel be punished and no one rules out the possibility of Egyptian soldiers or police taking matters in their own hands and staging freelance reprisals against Israel.

2.  The new Israeli deployment carries a message to Cairo.
The military junta’s demand to revise the military clauses of the peace treaty so as to permit the stationing of Egyptian forces up to the Israeli border of formerly demilitarized Sinai will be matched by extra military strength on the Israeli side too. Cairo’s reaction to the dying moments of the peace border between them is awaited in Jerusalem.
3. The Palestinian terrorist organizations of the Gaza Strip were encouraged by the success of their first raid from Sinai and eagerly prepared for more.
Early Wednesday morning, the IDF assassinated Islamic Jihad figure Ismail Zadi Ismail Asmar, who organized the smuggling of Iranian Grad missiles into Gaza via Sinai.
Asmar also provided the funding for the 15 or so terrorists who shot up the Eilat highway in southern Israel.

As of now, no Israeli spokesman has confirmed the debkafile report on the day of the attack that Iran, via Hizballah, was behind it, although Jihad Islami is notoriously Iran’s Palestinian surrogate and Tehran used Sinai smugglers to transfer the necessary funds for the planning and execution of the attack.
Officially, Israel still pins the blame on the Popular Resistance Committees.
Wednesday night, Jihad Islami fired 7 Grad missiles at Beersheba, Ashkelon, Ofakim and the Eshkol District, following which an Israeli air raid targeted and killing the head of the Grad team.

4. Cairo was reported Wednesday to be mapping the smuggling tunnels linking Sinai to the Gaza Strip in readiness for an operation to demolish them.
debkafile’s counterterrorism sources report that Cairo decided to go ahead with this plan after Hamas rejected its ultimatum to hand over all the Al Qaida operatives and former Egyptian jailbirds, mostly Muslim extremists, who broke out of prison in February at the start of the uprising against former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.
The Egyptian military warned Hamas that its refusal to hand them over carried a price: The destruction of the Gaza smuggling tunnel network.

IDF strategists fully expect Hamas and the other Palestinian terrorist groups to hit back for this operation at Israel. They will heat up the Egyptian-Israeli border from Sinai and the Al Qaeda, Hamas and Islamic Jihad cells already planted there will carry out more cross-border raids in southern Israel and Eilat.

Lt. Gen. Gantz announcement of the revised status of the Israeli-Egyptian border and the beefing up of the Edom Divisions was intended to have a deterrent effect.

5 Kassam rockets fired from Gaza slam South; n… JPost – Defense.\

    A number of Kassam rockets were fired from the Gaza Strip at the Eshkol Regional Council on Wednesday evening. Moments earlier, a Kassam rocket fell in an open field north of the Gaza strip. No injuries were or damage were reported.

At the same time, air raid sirens were also heard in the Beersheba region. A Beersheba city  spokesman said that the source of the sirens was from one of the nearby towns and not the city itself.

The Home Front Command on Wednesday canceled the “Breeza” Festival in Ashkelon following rocket fire alerts that were received for the southern region.

Members of the public were asked not to arrive at the festival and to follow instructions by given by the Home Front Command.

On Wednesday morning the Israeli Air Force targeted and hit two terrorists in separate locations in the northern Gaza Strip who were attempting to fire rockets into southern Israel.

Earlier on Wednesday, two mortar shells fired from Gaza exploded in open areas in the Eshkol Regional Council. No injuries were reported, but light damage was caused.

The mortar fire came after the IDF confirmed that a member of the terrorist group Islamic Jihad was killed in a car explosion in the Gaza Strip as a result of an IAF strike. An IDF statement said that the terrorist targeted in Rafah was involved in weapons smuggling and militant operations in Egypt’s Sinai from where gunmen snuck into Israel killing eight last week. Israel Radio reported that the terrorist killed in the strike was responsible for funding the Eilat attacks.

Palestinian news agency Ma’an said that the man killed was Ismail al-Asmar, a field commander in the Al-Quds Brigade, the Islamic Jihad’s military wing. A spokesman for a medical service run by Hamas said two other people were wounded after the car was targeted by IAF aircraft.

“Israel will pay a heavy price for this crime,” a statement by the Al-Quds Brigade said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Israel bolsters Egypt border defenses over new terror warnings – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Security officials say that Islamic Jihad operative killed in IAF strike on Wednesday was planning another attack from Sinai.

By Anshel Pfeffer, Avi Issacharoff, Reuters and Haaretz

Chief of Staff Benny Gantz ordered on Wednesday that the Israel Defense Forces increase defensive measures along Israel’s border with Egypt due to intelligence that terrorist groups are planning attacks similar to the ones last Thursday in which eight Israelis were killed.

The new measures include putting in place additional means of electronic and visual intelligence gathering as well bolstering the Navy Command Center in the southern city of Eilat.

	Chief of Staff Benny Gantz and Defense Minister Ehud Barak
	Photo by: Ariel Harmoni, Defense Ministry

Also on Wednesday, security officials said that the Islamic Jihad operative who was killed in an IAF airstrike early Wednesday morning was responsible for transfer of funds used in last Thursday’s attacks.

The operative was identified as 34-year-old Ismael al-Asmar.

Security officials said that the decision was made to target al-Asmar due to intelligence that he was planning to initiate another attack from Sinai in the coming days.

Al-Asmar was targeted while he was in a vehicle in the western part of Rafah in the Gaza Strip. One additional person was wounded.

Later on Wednesday morning, two mortar shells fired from Gaza exploded in the Eshkol Regional Council, causing light damage but no injuries.

IAF aircraft targeted two militants in seperate locations on Wednesday in the northern Gaza  who had launched projectiles at Israel shortly before, the IDF said in a statement.

A Egyptian woman was lightly wounded on Wednesday by a rocket fired from Gaza into the Sinai town of Rafah on Wednesday, Egypt’s state news agency MENA reported.

Egyptian security forces are reportedly searching the border region for the people connected to last Thursday’s terrorist attacks.

According to a report in Egypt’s al-Shorouk newspaper, Egyptian forces are also mapping the tunnels underneath the Gaza border and intend to destroy them.

Report: North Korea sent nuclear software to Iran – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

German news report cites Western intelligence officials saying that North Korea dispatched team of scientists in February to provide nuclear training to Iranian defense ministry employees.

By DPA

North Korea sent Iran software that could be used to develop nuclear weapons, a German news report said Wednesday, citing unidentified Western intelligence sources.

North Korea also sent a team of scientists to Iran in February to train about 20 employees of its Defense Ministry in the operation of the neutron flow simulation program, the Sueddeutche Zeitung reported.

	Iran’s Bushehr nuclear plant
	Photo by: AP

Calculating neutron flow in radioactive material allows scientists to determine when a chain reaction, or explosion, would occur. This information is essential for designing nuclear power reactors that do not explode and for building nuclear bombs that do.

Western countries suspect Iran is aiming to produce nuclear warheads. Tehran insists it is only enriching uranium for power generation and medical purposes.

North Korea is suspected of helping Iran with its nuclear program in return for 100 million dollars, which experts said would far exceed the cost of the training and software provided this year, the news report said.

On Saturday, Tehran said it would unveil a new cruise missile within the week with a longer range than the current Shahab 3, which has already raised concerns with its 2,000-kilometer range, covering all of arch-foe Israel.

On Monday, Iranian news reports said authorities had started transferring the first of 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium to a new plant in Fordo, north of Tehran.

The facility would be the country’s second enrichment plant after Natanz in central Iran.

North Korea tested nuclear bombs in 2006 and 2009. The isolated communist country is thought to have helped Syria build a nuclear facility that Israel bombed in 2007.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report August 23, 2011, 10:04 PM (GMT+02:00)

Qaddafi knocked off his pedestal

Muammar Qaddafi, his sons and military and political elite are reported by debkafile‘s military sources to have abandoned their Bab al Aziziya fortress early Tuesday, Aug. 23, using his son Saif al-Islam’s surreal appearance before foreign reporters earlier in the day to cover their escape.
Our sources believe they exited the compound through one of the underground tunnels of the compound’s military complex. But regional intelligence experts are baffled by the enigma of the mysterious sudden disappearance of Qaddafi’s divisions overnight. It’s as though the ground swallowed them up leaving no trace.

No one knows Qaddafi’s destination but informed observers expect him to make for Sebha in southern Libya where the local tribes are loyal to whom and where he established a whole range of subterranean military facilities. And that is where he located Libyan nuclear facilities in 2000, which he later agreed to dismantle. Qaddafi may have equipped a place of asylum at Sebha with military and residential facilities form which to launch a guerilla war against whomsoever takes power in Tripoli and against NATO targets in Libya and Europe, as punishment for his downfall.
Thousands of fighters from the tribes loyal to Qaddafi are reported by debkafile‘s military sources to have been streaming to the desert town in recent weeks. Prominent among them were members of his own Gaddadfa tribe which numbers some 100,000 members and is based in Sirte, a town lying on the Mediterranean coast in the north between Tripoli and the rebel base of Benghazi. Qaddafi will need the help of tribes other than his own in a region 800 kilometers south of his home town on the fringes of the Sahara, for waging a guerrilla war against the new rulers in Tripoli.
debkafile reported earlier Tuesday:

debkafile‘s military sources report that British, French, Jordanian and Qatari Special Operations forces Tuesday, Aug. 23, spearheaded the rebel “killer strike” on Muammar Qaddafi’s regime and Tripoli fortress at Bab al-Azaziya, Tripoli.  This was the first time Western and Arab ground troops had fought together on the same battlefield in any of the Arab revolts of the last nine months and the first time Arab soldiers took part in a NATO operation.
Our military sources report that the British deployed SAS commandoes and France, 2REP (Groupe des commando parachutiste), which is similar to the US Navy DELTA unit, as well as DINOP commandos. Fighting too were Jordan’s Royal Special Forces, specialists in urban combat and capturing fortified installations like the Qaddafi compound in Tripoli, and the Qatari Special Forces, which were transferred from Benghazi where they guarded rebel Transitional National Council leaders.
According to our military experts, even after getting through into the compound, this combined force faced four obstacles to before reaching its military heart which is largely underground:
1. Because it is too small to carry the two tasks of breaking into the heart of the Bab al-Azaziya complex which covers some 6 square kilometers and at the same time overwhelm Qaddafi’s 12th Tank Division also underground, this force needed to be backed by larger trained contingents armed with anti-tank weapons, which would advance into the labyrinth under close air cover from assault helicopters.
Britain and France transferred Apaches to Libya two months ago but never used them in Tripoli where they would be vulnerable to Qaddafi’s anti-air missiles.
2.  The main body of the rebels to the rear of the combined foreign force was nowhere near being a unified military force.

The rebels who took part in the first major push into Tripoli Sunday, Aug. 21, turned out to be mostly Berber tribal fighters from the Nafusa Mountains in the West, divided into small groups of no more than 100, each representing a different village. They have never trained together or acquired experience in urban warfare. NATO imported better-trained fighters by sea from Benghazi and Misrata.
3.  The great black clouds seen over the compound and caused by NATO jet bombardments and anti-tank fire may look menacing but they are not evidence of heavy fighting in or around the compound. And indeed it was soon over. As the rebel forces burst in, there was no sign of Qaddafi himself or his family and commanders.  They were presumed to have fled.
4.  NATO was short of specific intelligence about the military nucleus of Bab al-Aziziya. Most of its key facilities are underground and proof against bombardment.
Western alliance warplanes pummelled the compound month after month from March 19. They flattened the surface residential buildings and command centers, but their ordnance never reached the buried facilities. Our military sources say these chambers are interconnected by a network of corridors, some broad enough to accommodate tanks. The network branches out to the sea and locations outside Tripoli.
Sunday, Aug. 21, debkafile‘s military sources reported that the Qaddafi regime has fallen in Tripoli, but there is quite a way to go before the war is over.

Report: UN nuclear watchdog visits Iran’s main atomic sites – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) representative spends five days in Iran, according to semi-official Fars news agency; alleged rare visit comes as Russia tries to restart talks.

By Reuters

A senior United Nations official visited all of Iran’s main atomic sites last week, an Iranian news agency reported, as the Islamic Republic looks to restart talks with world powers about its nuclear program.

Herman Nackaerts, the head of the “safeguards” department of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), spent five days in Iran on a rare visit that coincided with a new push by Russia to re-start diplomatic talks.

	The reactor building of the Bushehr nuclear power plant is seen, just outside the southern city of Bushehr, Iran.
	Photo by: AP

The trip also happened as Iran started to move some of its uranium centrifuges to an underground bunker that would be less exposed to any strike by Israel or the United States.

Both countries say military action is a possible last resort to stop Iran getting the bomb. Tehran says its nuclear ambitions are entirely peaceful.

“During this trip, the delegation visited Bushehr nuclear plant, enrichment facilities in Natanz and Fordow, nuclear sites in Isfahan … and also the Arak heavy water reactor,” the semi-official Fars news agency quoted Iran’s ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, as saying.

Nackaerts, whose department is responsible for ensuring that nuclear material is not used for weapons, met Iran’s nuclear chief Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani.

“There were talks on how to expand cooperations with the Agency and how to answer some of the Agency’s questions,” Soltanieh said.

Iran is subject to four rounds of UN sanctions, as well as much tighter U.S. and European Union measures, due to its refusal to halt enriching uranium, a process that produces fuel for power stations but can also make nuclear bombs.

The IAEA was not immediately available to comment

Mideast Expert: Syria’s WMD Could Fall to Islamists.
Monday, 22 Aug 2011 07:30 PM

Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, according to Yaakov Katz, Israeli military expert and defense correspondent for the Jerusalem Post.

Syria Kills 10 as Demonstrators Cite Libya – Bloomberg.

Syrian security forces killed at least 10 people during demonstrations as the protesters, emboldened by rebel advances in Libya, called for President Bashar al-Assad to bow to international pressure to resign.

About 300 people were detained in the eastern city of Deir al-Zour and authorities also carried out many arrests in other cities, Mahmoud Merhi, head of the Arab Organization for Human Rights, said today by phone. Security forces conducted raids in Hama, deployed tanks in Deir al-Zour and positioned forces around Damascus, Al Jazeera television reported.

Assad has used tanks, armored vehicles, artillery and helicopters to crush the most serious threat to his family’s 40- year rule. The uprisings began in mid-March after revolts ousted the leaders of Tunisia and Egypt and sparked a conflict in Libya. In the Libyan capital, Tripoli, rebels were fighting Muammar Qaddafi’s loyalists today in an effort to consolidate their control over the city after declaring his regime over.

“Qaddafi is gone, gone and it’s now your turn, Bashar,” today’s London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper cited Syrians as chanting. At least 10 protesters died yesterday in the governorates of Hama, Homs, Aleppo and the southern area of Daraa, where rallies against Assad’s rule began, according to Merhi and Ammar Qurabi of the National Organization for Human Rights in Syria.

The United Nations Human Rights Council today ordered a probe into Syria’s crackdown on anti-government protesters, including possible crimes against humanity.

Systematic Violations

The council condemned what it called “continued grave and systematic human-rights violations by Syrian authorities, such as arbitrary executions, excessive use of force and the killing and persecution of protesters and human-rights defenders.”

The resolution to “urgently dispatch an independent international commission of inquiry to investigate violations of international human-rights law in Syria since July 2011” passed in Geneva by a 33-4 vote, with nine abstentions, on the second day of a special session on Syria. The European Union, the U.S. and Arab countries including Saudi Arabia sponsored the resolution.

China, Russia, Cuba and Ecuador voted against the resolution while India, Mauritania, Angola, the Philippines, Cameroon, Uganda, Bangladesh, Djibouti and Malaysia abstained.

Assad told UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Aug. 18 that security operations had stopped. A day later 40 protesters were killed in Homs, Daraa and a suburb of Damascus, according to Merhi and Qurabi.

“It’s troubling that he has not kept his word,” Ban told reporters yesterday in New York.

Russian Warning

In Russia, the foreign-affairs committee chief in the lower house of parliament warned yesterday that efforts by western nations to force regime change in Syria after intervening to oust Qaddafi risk triggering the country’s collapse. Russia this week rejected demands from the U.S. and the EU for Assad to step down.

“I would advise all countries thinking about Syria to keep in mind the negative example of Libya,”Konstantin Kosachyov said in telephone interview in Moscow yesterday. “The risk of civil war there is even greater than in Libya, which would lead to the collapse of the country.”

At least 2,400 people have been killed since the protests started, according to Merhi’s and Qurabi’s organizations. The UN puts the death toll at more than 2,200. At least 500 members of the security forces have died, the government has said.

“Colonialist” Powers

Assad, who succeeded his father as president after his death in 2000, said security has improved and that Syrian forces had foiled efforts to undermine the country. He has blamed the protests on foreign-inspired plots.

Assad, in an interview on state television from Damascus on Aug. 21, rejected U.S. and European demands to step down and pledged to schedule parliamentary elections by February and review the constitution. He called the U.S. and European nations “colonialist” powers that want to violate Syria’s sovereignty.

The U.S., Britain and France are preparing to ask the UN Security Council this week to freeze Assad’s foreign financial assets, a western diplomat said yesterday. The measure would also bar foreign travel by the Syrian leader and call for an arms embargo on Syria, the diplomat said.

The three nations are planning to introduce the draft resolution that targets Assad and about five other government and military leaders, according to the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the text hasn’t been made public.

U.S. President Barack Obama, in a coordinated move with U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, issued a statement on Aug. 18 saying Assad should leave and let Syrians chart their own political future.

Iranian man pleads guilty to mur… JPost – Iranian Threat – News.

    TEHRAN  – An Iranian man pleaded guilty on Tuesday to the murder of a scientist that prosecutors said was an assassination ordered by Israel to halt Tehran’s race for nuclear technology.

Majid Jamali-Fashi, a man who looked in his mid-20s, appeared in court to confess the murder of Massoud Ali-Mohammadi in January 2010, the first of several attacks on scientists which Iran has blamed on foreign agents, state television said.

Ali-Mohammadi, an elementary-particle physicist, was leaving his Tehran home to go to work on Jan. 12, 2010, when a bomb hidden in a motorcycle exploded and killed him.

Two similar attacks on one morning in November killed nuclear scientist Majid Shahriyari and wounded another, Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, who has since become Iran’s atomic energy chief.

Iran blamed Israel and the United States for the attacks, saying the aim was to derail its nuclear program. Tehran denies Western accusations it is seeking nuclear weapons.

Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi told state TV the prosecution was a blow to Israel, which has not ruled out military action against Iran to stop it getting the bomb.

“We managed to make a good penetration into Mossad’s intelligence system which bore very good results for us,” he said, referring to the Israeli spy service.

“We will soon have good news to inform the public in connection to the large number of (Iranian) Mossad spies whose covers have been blown.”

Tehran’s chief prosecutor told reporters earlier this week that Jamali-Fashi had been trained and paid by Israel.

“The defendant had travelled to Israel to receive training from Mossad and had agreed to assassinate Dr Ali-Mohammadi in return for $120,000 dollars,” Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi told a news conference, according to the Tehran Times daily.

Some people have expressed doubt over Tehran’s version of events.

Shortly after his death, an Iranian opposition website said Ali-Mohammadi, was an opposition supporter who backed moderate candidate Mirhossein Mousavi in the disputed June 2009 presidential election, suggesting there may be other possible motives for his murder.

Western analysts said the a 50-year-old Tehran University professor had little, if any, role in Iran’s sensitive nuclear work. A spokesman for Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, said at the time he had not played a role in the body’s activities.

Jamali-Fashi could face the death penalty as he has been charged with “war against God” as well as cooperating with Israel and possession of drugs, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

He told the court he was supposed to kill five other people but did not because: “I was by nature not a criminal person.”