Posted on 07/18/2006 2:16:56 PM PDT by mojito
Although Hizbullah has suffered a harsh blow from Israeli air force strikes which took out a good percentage of their available weapons, Syria was continuing to smuggle arms into Lebanon to rearm the group, IDF Operations Branch Head Major General Gadi Eisenkot said during a press briefing Tuesday.
Thus far, the IAF managed to intercept a number of trucks transporting rockets from Syria to Hizbullah, including trucks laden with the 20mm-diameter rockets with warheads like the one that hit the Haifa train depot Monday, claiming eight lives. Maj.-Gen. Eisenkot said he would be very surprised if official elements in Syria were unaware of these transports.
“These are rockets that belong to the Syrian army. You can’t find them in the Damascus market, and the Syrian government is responsible for this smuggling,” Eisenkot said, but stressed, “We are not operating against Syria or the Lebanese army.”
During the briefing, Maj.-Gen. Eisenkot said the IDF has hit over 1,000 targets, 180 of them Katyusha and rocket storage sites and 350 launch sites. Over 250 missile strikes were carried out with the aim of blocking traffic arteries, and 200 buildings used by Hizbullah were hit. According to Eisenkot, Israel’s offensive would continue without time limitations.
“With that, we always operate under the principle of a short fighting period. In the short term, this is a complicated reality for civilians too, but in the long term this operation holds great importance for all of us,” he noted. He added that senior Hizbullah leaders were hiding out in underground bunkers. “We struck a number of mid-level operatives in the organization, and not in the numbers we wished, but our energies have been aimed at taking out weapons stores and rocket launchers,” he said.
At the briefing, IAF Commander Brig. Gen. Amir Eshel presented footage of an army aircraft scoring a direct hit on a truck laden with rockets, and noted that the truck was disguised as a civilian vehicle in order not to be identified.
“We are faced with very complex operations here, which demand excellent intelligence information. To thwart this, we are blocking the Lebanon-Syria border, and warplanes are constantly flying over the area,” he said. He noted that as time passes, the air force was becoming familiar with the enemy and its operations were therefore becoming more sophisticated and efficient.
The IDF was continuing to destroy Hizbullah bases within one kilometer of the border that were built over the past six years since the army withdrew from Lebanon. Residents of southern Lebanese villages, where rockets were being fired from, had been asked to leave the area, officials noted at the briefing.
Sounds like Israel would be perfectly justified hitting staging areas within Syria for these transports. Why are we and Israel so timid about hitting Syria for its support of terrorists both in Lebanon and Iraq??? How many Americans have to die in order to preserve Syria's well-being??
Excellent.
Timid indeed. That supposed 72-hour ultimatum warning of "disastrous consequences" to Syria expired about 12 hours ago; no disaster yet...
Is that correct? Seems kind of small..
Assad is much better than a leader that would go along with Iran, so Israel is letting him get away with anything. /sarc
Can you believe these @ssholes. Are they crazy? Israel's immediate and explicit intent is to get their soldiers back. If Syria pulls them into war they, Syria, will be bombed back to the stone age.
Iran will not come to thier aid.
Israel needs to make it perfectly clear to Syria that if this continues they will bear the responsibility.
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Probably resulting in the deaths of more civilian truck drivers and crews.
Syria has an aggressive and secure rocket-based chemical and perhaps biological missile deterrent system.
Hitting anything in Syria would constitute a major escalation, and may not be advisable at this juncture.
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It might have to do with getting foreign nationals evacuated...
If true ...someone in Syria has a death wish.
You could ask the same thing about hte staging areas in Syria and Iran for the stuff that comes into Iraq. For some reason, the US has decided to let those two off the hook. I can't explain it. And I'd think Israel is trying not to ignite "the big one". Goin after Syria is going all in, so to speak. This is just the furst round and I think they're waiting to see what the river brings
That would be considered escalation and might cause public opinion (molded by MSM) to engage in twarting Israel's plans.
Best to wipe out Hezbollah in Lebanon. Once that is complete and the threat is eliminated, go to their sources...Syria and the other gangsters.
That has to be a typo, 20mm is less than an inch.
Stone age..Stone age...Stone age.
sung like... To ga...To ga...To ga.
Probably 20 centimeters; otherwise, they would be raining "cigar rockets" down on Israel.
The only way this is gonna end is to take down the Syrian regime.
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