Reportedly, Israel is giving Syria 72 hours to rein in Hezbollah or face the consequences:
The London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Hayat reported Saturday that ?Washington has information according to which Israel gave Damascus 72 hours to stop Hizbullah?s activity along the Lebanon-Israel border and bring about the release the two kidnapped IDF soldiers or it would launch an offensive with disastrous consequences.?
The report said ?a senior Pentagon source warned that should the Arab world and international community fail in the efforts to convince Syria to pressure Hizbullah into releasing the soldiers and halt the current escalation Israel may attack targets in the country.?
Al-Hayat quoted the source as saying that ?the US cannot rule out the possibility of an Israeli strike in Syria,? this despite the fact that the Bush administration has asked Israel to ?refrain from any military activity that may result in civilian casualties.?
Israeli strikes at Syria would, obviously, be a major escalation of the war. The next three days promise to be interesting.
And then, there’s this report about the missile filed at an Israeli ship off Lebanon last night:
JERUSALEM (AP) — A missile fired by Hezbollah, not an unmanned drone laden with explosives, damaged an Israeli warship off Lebanon, the army said Saturday. Iranian troops helped fire the missile, a senior intelligence official said.
One sailor was killed and three were missing.
The intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the information, said about 100 Iranian soldiers are in Lebanon and helped fire the Iranian-made, radar-guided C-102 at the ship late Friday.
This just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Rick Moran has more and will be updating this story as needed.
July 15th, 2006 at 10:38 am
To Hell in a Hand Basket
It is being reported in London-based Arabic language newspaper Al-Hayat that Israel is giving Syria 72 hours to ?Hizbullah?s activity, bring about release of kidnapped IDF troops. ?Israel will not end military activity until new situation created tha…