As they intermittently have done over the course of the past few years, Israeli warplanes today attacked the Syrian capital city of Damascus, striking an area near the Damascus airport. Locals reported explosions in the area, along with a brief power outage and a temporary grounding of flights out of the airport.
There was no news of any casualties, nor any confirmation of what the Israeli planes may have been targeting, though some rebel factions speculated that they were targeting a shipment of weapons to Hezbollah. This is generally the justification for Israeli strikes, though the Israeli government rarely confirms or denies such strikes.
As usual, the Israeli Defense Forces declined to comment on the attack, which would be one of the first confirmed strikes since Russia became formally involved in the Syrian War. Russia has limited Israeli overflights elsewhere in Syria, but is said to have made a deal to coordinate with Israel to prevent inadvertent conflicts elsewhere in the country.
Though Israeli strikes regularly kill some Hezbollah fighters or a few Syrian soldiers, they are generally not considered a serious threat to the survival of the Assad government, so Russia likely would not object to more such limited strikes.
*GOD BLESS AMERICA*
Israeli terrorism at work, trying to stir the pot of bloodshed and misery.
Israel, as always is following their "prime directive" which is stir the pot until America is involved than, fight to the last American soldier, the last American dollar. "Let's you and him fight" is their mantra, as well as "by way of deception we do war". When will we end this terminally toxic "special relationship" which is leading us to ruin? When will we stop and hold accountable Israel's traitorous fifth column which treasonously sell America out? Please, use the RICO act or the heinous Espionage Act, both of which apply in spades.
"Russia has limited Israeli overflights elsewhere in Syria". If I'm not mistaken, this is the first time in the history of the Israeli armed forces that they have allowed a foreign country to dictate to them where they can and cannot fly.
This event didn't happen it's pure propaganda by the writer. The jet would have been taken out of the sky by a S-300. The Russian now have S-400 in place around the air field they are using in Syria.
Maybe there are S-300s or S-400s in place around the airport, maybe there aren't.
If there are, maybe they were used and maybe they weren't.
If they were used, maybe they were effective and maybe they weren't.
The fact that you really, really, reaaaalllly want to believe something doesn't make it so.
Gareth Porter had at least one source a few years ago saying USg did tell them they "will be shot down" if spotted over —I believe— Iraq on the way to Iran. (From memory, his interviews with Scott Horton.)
Israel just cannot keep itself out of trouble. It keep pushing US into conflicts in Middle East at huge cost to US economy and its future generations, for no other reasons then the fact that it has zero intentions of making friends in the region, but it wants to be the perpetual agent of instability and recipient of US funds for its cushy living, building new towns and infrastructure on occupied land, and that is something that will come to an end only when US is broke. It already is, but we have the printing press. For the time being, this will work, but they are already warning us that our social security fund "has no money", meaning they have spent it years in advance to fund the never ending wars. And since ISIS fighters get $1,000 a month, we are assured a long, long war. Even Congress does not bother any more to ask questions.
I received this news from Catholic Culture.org yesterday.
"Hundreds of Syrian Christian fighters have gathered to defend Sadad, A Christian town of 3, 500 between Homs and Damascus, as forces of the Islamic State advance.
Newsweek reported that that Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II, the head of the Syriac Orthodox Church, visited Sadad in order to encourage the town's defenders.
'It's under assault,' the patriarch said, 'The very young people in Sadad, with the help of some armed groups, were able to fight back and push IS back to where they started.'"
Let's hope the Russians help these Christians in their fight against IS.