Posted on 04/19/2017 11:55:12 AM PDT by drewh
The US Mediterranean fleet is moving into position ready for a decision to launch Tomahawk cruise missiles for a crushing assault on the Islamic State’s mountain strongholds in central Sinai, military and counterterrorism sources report.
This would be the second American strike in a month against a Middle East target, after 59 cruise missiles destroyed one-fifth of the Syrian air force at the Shayrat air base on April 7 in response for Assad’s chemical attack on Syrian civilians.
The prospective American missile attack in Sinai would raise the war on ISIS in the Middle East to a new plane. It would have been discussed during the Egyptian President Abdul-Fatteh El-Sisi’s visit to the White House on April 3. He explained to his host, President Donald Trump, the immense difficulty of overcoming the Islamic State’s affiliate when its headquarters were dug into an interconnected web of tunnels and caves in the central Jabal (Mount) Halal of the peninsula.
Nicknamed the “Tora Bora of Sinai,” approach roads to this mountain fastness are few and far between, in common with the Afghan cave network near the Pakistan border destroyed on April 13 by the biggest non-nuclear bomb, the GBU-43/B, in the American arsenal.
The last Egyptian assault on ISIS’ towering mountain stronghold took place on April 2, shortly before El-Sisi travelled to Washington. The Egyptian military announced that 31 terrorists had been killed and a number of caves holding arms and ammunition destroyed.
But the damage was not devastating enough to disrupt the Islamist terrorists’ operations, military sources report. Most of the terrorists escaped with the help of allied Bedouin tribesmen who, familiar with every nook and cranny in the desert peninsula, guided them to safety in new caves in Jabal Halal that were even more inaccessible to Egyptian troops.
Their new headquarters can only be destroyed by cruise missiles capable of exploding underground.
The Egyptians and Americans believe that if the Jabal Halal cave system sheltering the ISIS-Sinai core command center is destroyed, its long campaign of terror will be curtailed. The flow of terrorist manpower, arms and explosives from the mountain to the networks which terrorize the population and Egyptian forces of northern Sinai will dry up.
Jabal Halal is also the hub of the ISIS smuggling networks, through which fighters and arms are moved from southern Libya into Sinai and Egypt. Knocking it out will also deliver a resounding blow to that traffic.
A final decision to go ahead with a US missile assault on central Sinai rests with Defense Secretary James Mattis. He is due to arrive in Cairo on Wednesday, April 19.
Is there no way to keep this information secret until the missiles hit?
Drop the MOP
where are they going to run to? heck, I would throw in some MOABS from the friendly B-2’s at Whiteman while we are at it!
Looks like the dogs are being unleashed, and that plan that DJT said he’d ask the generals for is already being executed.
That’s what a chief executive is supposed to do.
B2 doesn’t carry the MOAB at least not yet.
How many times does everyone have to be warned about any reports from Debka???
Uh with a 24 hour notice, I’m sure they have a couple of options. The point is Trump prides himself in no tipping his hand, which I agree with. So what is this “warning” al labout?
Great, this will be very effective now that the enemy knows our next target. I bet 2 minutes after this was leaked, they began moving stuff and getting out of there.
the barbarian hordes must live in fear every waking moment of what we are about to do. that’s how we ‘win’ this conflict
See #8
The MOAB is too large for any plane other than a transport plane, isn’t it?
Has Debka ever been right about...anything?
“Great, this will be very effective now that the enemy knows our next target. I bet 2 minutes after this was leaked, they began moving stuff and getting out of there.”
I understand. Keep them under close satellite and drone observation, then spook them into running to a more secure location. Bingo, new target.
so gove them time and date of attack? I don’t agree.
not sure what that is
It’s Debka so not really news.
It’s kinda like getting news from Mad Magazine
the only way to beat the caves in the lawless tribal mountain areas is to MOAB them into submission
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