WarSclerotic

US official: Israel notified us about Syria attack | The Times of Israel.

IAF warplanes reportedly hit convoy carrying anti-aircraft weaponry en route to Hezbollah forces in Lebanon; regime claims jets targeted research facility

An IAF F-15 fighter jet during a training exercise (photo credit: Ofer Zidon/Flash90)

US officials told the New York Times on Wednesday that Israel had notified the United States about an airstike it carried out overnight Tuesday near the Lebanese-Syrian border.

The officials said that they believed the target of the strike was a convoy carrying sophisticated anti-aircraft weaponry intended to reach Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. 

An unnamed Western official told the Wall Street Journal that the convoy was carrying sophisticated SA-17 anti-aircraft weapons.

Israel has so far declined to comment on whether or not it had carried out the strike, but the Syrian Army issued a statement Wednesday accusing it of bombing a “scientific research center” in the Jamraya area just northwest of Damascus.

Two workers at the facility were killed and five were injured in the strike, the Syrian Army said, adding that considerable material damage was caused to the site, which was responsible for “raising the level of resistance and self-defense” of Syria’s military.

The statement denied that the strike was aimed at a convoy, and did not specify as to the purpose of the installation that was hit.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, US officials believe there may have been two strikes, one aimed at the convoy and another at a military facility.

Unconfirmed Lebanese media reports said the facility attacked contained chemical weapons.

The Syrian army portrayed the strike near Jamraya as linked to the civil war pitting Assad’s forces against rebels seeking to push him from power.

It said that “armed terrorist gangs”, a term the government uses to describe rebel groups, had tried and failed repeatedly to capture the same facility in recent months.

“This proves that Israel is the instigator, beneficiary and sometimes executor of the terrorist acts targeting Syria and its people,” the statement said.

Regional security officials said Israel had been planning in the days leading up to the airstrike to hit a shipment of weapons bound for Hezbollah, Lebanon’s most powerful military force. Among Israeli officials’ fears is that Assad will pass chemical weapons or sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles to Hezbollah — something that could change the balance of power in the region and greatly hinder Israel’s ability to conduct air sorties in Lebanon.

The regional officials said the shipment Israel was planning to strike included Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, which would be strategically “game-changing” in the hands of Hezbollah by enabling the group to carry out fiercer attacks on Israel, and shoot down Israeli jets, helicopters, and surveillance drones.

Hezbollah has committed to Israel’s destruction and has gone to war against the Jewish state in the past, most recently in 2006 when Israel carried out a 34-day military operation targeting the group’s bases and infrastructure.

Lebanese officials said a dozen Israeli warplanes violated Lebanese airspace on Tuesday and overnight into Wednesday, flying close to the ground in several sorties over southern Lebanon.

A Lebanese army statement said the last of the sorties took place at 2 a.m. Wednesday. It said four warplanes flew in over the southernmost coastal town of Naqoura and hovered over villages for several hours in south Lebanon before leaving Lebanese airspace.

The Lebanese army said similar flights by eight other warplanes were conducted Tuesday, but added that it had no knowledge of an airstrike.

Earlier this week, Israel moved a battery of its new “Iron Dome” rocket defense system to the northern city of Haifa, which was battered by Hezbollah rocket fire in the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war. The Israeli army called that move “routine.”

Israel Military Intelligence Chief Aviv Kochavi is in Washington for consultations at the Pentagon, including meetings with Joint Chiefs of Staff head Martin Dempsey.

Vice Prime Minister Silvan Shalom said Sunday that any such transfer of arms to Hezbollah “would be crossing a line that would demand a different approach.”

On Tuesday, Air Force chief Amir Eshel said Israel needed to be wary of both conventional and non-conventional weapons finding their way out of Syria.

“There is, in Syria, an enormous arsenal of weapons, some state of the art and some non-conventional. All of it could find its way to our borders and not just to our backyards,” he said.

Tuesday’s strike was Israel’s first inside Syria since September 2007, when warplanes destroyed a site that the UN nuclear watchdog deemed likely to be a nuclear reactor. Syria denied the claim, saying the building was a non-nuclear military site.

Syria allowed international inspectors to visit the bombed site in 2008, but it has refused to allow nuclear inspectors new access. This has heightened suspicions that Syria has something to hide, along with its decision to level the destroyed structure and build on its site.

In 2006, Israeli warplanes flew over Assad’s palace in a show of force after Syrian-backed militants captured an Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip.

And in 2003, Israeli warplanes attacked a suspected militant training camp just north of the Syrian capital, in response to an Islamic Jihad suicide bombing in the city of Haifa that killed 21 Israelis.

Syria vowed to retaliate for both attacks but never did.

Despite tensions, no special alerts were recorded in the north of Israel. Municipal bomb shelters, normally opened when the security situation warrants it, remained closed Thursday morning, Israel Radio reported.

AP and Mitch Ginsburg contributed to this report.

Syria: Israel attacked military research center – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Syria’s military command says Israeli warplanes attacked military research center in Damascus province denying reports that jets hit weapons convoy; two killed, five injured. Residents, experts say site was chemical weapons facility

Ynet reporters

Israeli warplanes attacked a military research center in Damascus province at dawn on Wednesday, Syria‘s military command said, denying reports that the planes had struck a convoy carrying weapons from Syria to Lebanon.

Local residents and experts claim the target was a chemical weapons production center.

Two people were killed and five wounded in the attack on the site in Jamraya, which Syria described as one of a number of “scientific research centers aimed at raising the level of resistance and self-defense”.

The building was destroyed, the military command said in a statement carried by state media.

It said the planes crossed into Syria below the radar level, just north of Mount Hermon, and returned the same way.

Area of attack according to Syrian statement (Photo: Google Maps)

The Jamraya area contains many military facilities as well as what is likely a chemical weapons production and storage site. The area also houses training camps for Hezbollah combatants who are learning to operate advanced Russian weapons systems.

It was further noted that the attack occurred after terrorist groups tried and failed to take control of the site several times.

SA-17 missiles

The Syrian army statement denied that the strike had targeted a convoy headed from Syria to Lebanon, instead portraying the strike as linked to the civil war pitting Bashar Assad’s forces against rebels seeking to push him from power.

“This proves that Israel is the instigator, beneficiary and sometimes executor of the terrorist acts targeting Syria and its people,” the statement said.

Residents near Damascus had previously told AFP that missiles had struck a military site for unconventional weapons on Tuesday at 11:30 pm.

According to them, the center, which is located in Al-Hameh, about fifteen kilometers north-west of Damascus, was hit by six missiles that were partially destroyed, causing a fire and killing at least two people.

A Lebanese news website quoted a Syrian source as saying that the target of the alleged Israeli strike was a chemical weapons center. The Damascus source said that the attack took place at 1:30 am at a scientific research center in the Jamraya area.

He added that four security guards were killed in the attack and that the blast could be heard as far as Damascus.

Syrian rebels posted a video allegedly documenting a series of blasts at the center shortly after the attack had taken place. The video could not be authenticated. On Wednesday, several rebel leaders claimed that they had attacked the site with mortar shells.

Israel’s intelligence community has been aware of the military research center for decades. Some of the center’s studies have been presented as civilian in nature. Yiftah Shafir of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv said, “It is a secret governmental body that answers directly to Assad and aggregates all of Syria’s military research institutes.”

 Earlier on Wednesday AP quoted US and regional officials as saying that Israel conducted an airstrike inside Lebanon, hitting a convoy of trucks.

The officials said Israel had been planning in the days leading up to the airstrike to hit a shipment of weapons bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon. They said the shipment included sophisticated, Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, which would be strategically “game-changing” in the hands of Hezbollah.

Lebanese sources also commented on the reports and stressed that there had been no strike inside Lebanese territory. An eye witness from a border town said that there had been no explosion.

A senior official with the Lebanese security forces told Turkey’s Anatolia news agency that they were not aware of any attack on the Syria-Lebanon border area.

He did however say that an Israeli force had infiltrated the border strip in south Lebanon for several minutes on Tuesday night. Lebanese army sources said that the forces did not observe any Israeli activity overnight.

Roi Kais, Elior Levy, Yoav Zitun, AP and Reuters contributed to this report

Syria: Israeli jets strike Jamaraya arms depot near Damascus leaving casualties.

DEBKAfile Special Report January 30, 2013, 10:24 PM (GMT+02:00)

Israeli warplanes attack Syrian arms depot

The Syrian government, by admitting that the Israel Air Force attacked the Jamaraya “Military Research Institute” (a euphemism for an arms deport), near Damascus, broke the barrier of silence the Israeli government had clamped down on its initial involvement in the Syrian conflict.  It also indicated that Bashar Assad may have decided to pick up the gauntlet thrown down by Israel. The Syrian statement also refuted the report by foreign media from “Israeli sources” that Israeli jets had struck a convoy carrying sophisticated weapons from Syria to the Hizballah in Lebanon.

The Syrian statement was detailed: It said that the “Military Research Institute” developed Syrian army and Hizballah combat  capabilities, that two Syrian solders were killed and five injured in the raid, and that a building had been leveled along with serious damage to military vehicles parked outside.

Israeli warplanes were described as coming in low from the north to evade Syrian [and Iranian] radar after flying over the Syrian peaks of the Hermon ridge. The Israeli jets were reported to have flown back to home base by the same route.
Last week, debkafile reports, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu sent two senior aides to Washington and Moscow with an identical message:  If Bashar Assad ventures to permit Syrian arms, conventional or chemical, to reach Hizballah, the Israeli Defense Forces will prevent their delivery by force.
Military Intelligence chief Maj. Gen Aviv Kochavi handed this message to Obama administration officials in Washington and National Security Adviser Yakov Amidror delivered it for Vladimir Putin in Moscow.

debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report the message was sent out too late and soon overtaken by events:

1. Assad has passed the point of being accessible to outside influence or receptive to international condemnation. He no longer listens even to the advice of allies, such as President Vladimir Putin.

2.  The Syrian ruler is no longer interested in how the sophisticated weapons owned by Hizballah and stored in Syria are disposed of.  For years they were stored in Syrian military storehouses and kept from crossing the border into Lebanon by Israeli threats. Now, as far as Assad is concerned, Hizballah can collect the weapons systems or leave them where they are, whatever they wish. But they will have to take charge of keeping them secure since the Syrian army has no manpower to spare for this task.
3.  On the other hand, Assad acknowledges his debt to Hizballah for the great assistance it has rendered his war against the Syrian insurgency. He will therefore not deny his Lebanese ally assistance in preparing for war with Israel.
For all these reasons, the Kochavi and Amidror missions were a wasted effort.
Furthermore, two days earlier, President Barack Obama made it clear that he was not getting the United States involved in the Syrian conflict. In an interview to The New Republic,  he asked rhetorically: “In a situation like Syria I have to ask: can we make a difference in that situation?”

From that point on, it was obviously up to Syria’s neighbors to pick up the Syrian ball themselves, including the threat of chemical warfare.
After the Israeli air raid, the Pentagon pointed a finger at its authors, answering reporters’ question with a terse: Ask Israel.
By publishing the Israeli air raid, Bashar Assad seems to be treating it with all the seriousness of an act of war. His next step may well be to fight back.