Officials: Israel launches airstrike into Syria
Israel launched an airstrike into Syria, apparently targeting a suspected weapons site, U.S. officials said Friday night.
The strike occurred overnight Thursday into Friday, the officials told The Associated Press. It did not appear that a chemical weapons site was targeted, they said, and one official said the strike appeared to have hit a warehouse.
The U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Israel has targeted weapons in the past that it believes are being delivered to the Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah. Earlier this week, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said his group would assist Syrian President Bashar Assad if needed in the effort to put down a 2-year-old uprising.
Israeli Embassy spokesman Aaron Sagui would not comment Friday night specifically on the report of an Israeli strike into Syria.
"What we can say is that Israel is determined to prevent the transfer of chemical weapons or other game-changing weaponry by the Syrian regime to terrorists, specially to Hezbollah in Lebanon," Sagui said in an email to the AP.
In 2007, Israeli jets bombed a suspected nuclear reactor site along the Euphrates River in northeastern Syria, an attack that embarrassed and jolted the Assad regime and led to a buildup of the Syrian air defense system. Russia provided the hardware for the defense systems upgrade and continues to be a reliable supplier of military equipment to the Assad regime.
Alright... who the F knows how this all came about but my tin foil hat is screaming on this one. Syria crossed Obama's line in the sand and Israel attacks. Here's what it looks like with my hat on... Now, instead of the big fear of the U.S. arming the rebels who may very well be more religiously fanatic than we'd like who'd then in turn attack the west or support terrorist groups against us and Israel... now these potential fanatics when they land Syria by ousting Assad, they practically have to give Israel some kind of kudos starting them off in a rather akward position for trying to hate the guys that very publicly helped them.