Posted on 05/05/2013 10:48:13 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
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Israeli warplanes struck areas in and around the Syrian capital, setting off a series of explosions as they targeted a shipment of highly accurate, Iranian-made guided missiles believed to be on their way to Lebanon's Hezbollah group, officials and activists said. Syria's state media on Sunday reported that Israeli missiles struck a military and scientific research centre near the Syrian capital and caused casualties. The attack, the second in three days, signaled a sharp escalation of Israel's involvement in Syria's civil war. "The new Israeli attack is an attempt to raise the morale of the terrorist groups which have been reeling from strikes by our noble army," Syrian television said, referring to recent offensives by the forces of Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, against the armed opposition. A Western intelligence source confirmed the attack to The Associated Press, saying the target of Sunday's strike was a shiptment of advanced guided Iranian-made missiles, believed to be on their way to Lebanon's group Hezbollah. Video footage uploaded onto the internet by activists showed a huge ball of fire rising into the night sky. Later on Sunday, the Syrian government condemned the airstrikes, saying the attacks aim "to give direct military support to terrorist groups" fighting the government. The Syrian Foreign Ministry also said in a letter sent to the United Nations and the UN Security Council that the "Israeli aggression" killed and wounded several people and "cause widespread distruction". 'Felt like an earthquake' A Damascus resident described the blasts to Al Jazeera, saying they felt like "an earthquake" and "unprecedented".
A senior Israeli source told AFP that Israel had carried out the airstrike, which they said struck near Damascus airport. "The attack was very close to hte airport, the target was Iranian missiles which were destined for Hezbollah," he told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. The US State Department had no immediate comment and the Israeli embassy in Washington declined comment. Israel has repeatedly said that it is prepared to resort to force to prevent Syrian weapons, including chemical weapons, from reaching Hezbollah or groups. Syria's rebel Free Syrian Army reacted cautiously on Sunday to the Israeli air strikes, saying their country was already under attack daily by regime war planes. "Of course the Free Syrian Army and any Syrian is bothered that their country is being bombed, but Syria is being bombed every day by (President) Bashar al-Assad, and by Israel," FSA media and political coordinator Louay Meqdad told. He spoke after Syrian state media reported that Israeli rockets struck a military facility outside the capital Damascus overnight, the second reported attack by the Jewish state inside Syria this week. "We wonder why there are so many missiles and military installations around Damascus when they should be close to the ceasefire line with Israel on the Golan Heights," he added. "For us, the operations that we carry out every day are not related to Israeli attacks or anything else, and we will continue to fight until the fall of Assad," he said. The US president, Barack Obama, said on Saturday, before the latest incident, that it was up to Israel to confirm or deny any strikes, but that the US coordinated very closely with Israel. "The Israelis, justifiably, have to guard against the transfer of advanced weaponry to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah," Obama told the Spanish-language TV station Telemundo. |
C'mon........moslem scientists?
Gimme a break.
What’s the feild of view (frame width) for a fairly cheesy consumer camera with 8-10 power zoom at 2 miles?
(Beyond my ability to calculate.)
No idea....someone might wander by with the desired info...I’ll try a camera guy.
Gotcher videos right here.
You can watch the video time counter between the flash and the bang, then use Google to estimate the distance:
11 * mach 1 in miles per second
I couldn't find a way to get it cancel out the units properly, however.
17 A PROPHESY AGAINST DAMASCUS:
“See, Damascus will no longer be a city
but will become a heap of ruins.
2 The cities of Aroer will be deserted
and left to flocks, which will lie down,
with no one to make them afraid.
3 The fortified city will disappear from Ephraim,
and royal power from Damascus;
the remnant of Aram will be
like the glory of the Israelites,”
declares the Lord Almighty.
Prior to the large blast you can see what appears to be a structure silhouetted by small blasts behind. If what your seeing is a roughly 3 foot doorway or window opening than the huge fireball seconds later might easily be 300-400 feet across.
And pretty much everything else in the immediate vicinity, including a pretty major Syrian military installation.
Consider the implications.
By the size of the secondary explosion, there must have been a sizable cache of Iranian missiles and warheads staged there for use by terrorists.
This cache represents a huge investment in time and assets by Iran to build the missiles and launch systems.
The facility is near an airport, so the Iranian's also must have spent a huge amount of assets airlifting them into Syria, along with lots of other ordnance.
According to reports, Iran had completed what must have been many months of covert deliveries of missiles and were in the process of transferring them to Hezbollah Terrorists.
This transfer no doubt meant the there were many high level Syrian, Iranian, Hezbollah, North Korean and possibly Pakistani officials, high level Military personnel, highly trained technicians from the above countries , and the terrorist crews training to operate the missile batteries all on site.
In effect, the Israelis allowed Iran and Syria to transport and stage a huge quantity of ordnance into one of the Crown Jewels of Syria’s Military-Industrial Complex and effectively used that ordnance to completely destroy that facility along with a lot of irreplaceable, high value and high-level personnel
This is a huge loss Syria, Iran and Hezbollah and poetic justice of the highest order
5-10-5! (from a time back when the world still understood right from wrong)
If Israeli’s can target an Iranian scientists in traffic in Iran, than you can easily assume they knew who was at this site at any time of the day. If they bombed a convey last week, you can assume they know where it originated from and even have some forensic evidence from the ground ascertaining what that convoy contained. What does it take to collect some dust nearby -ease.
It’s a given anyone at that site was a zealous supporters of Assad or by foreign proxy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_view#Common_lens_angles_of_view
http://www.tawbaware.com/maxlyons/calc.htm
Using a 35mm camera with a 50mm lens as a baseline you have a 39.6° horizontal field of view. That would give a 1.44 mile width at 2 miles.
Ten times zoom (assuming it goes from 50 to 500mm equivalent rather than something like 28-280mm) at 500mm would have a 4.1° field of view or 0.14 miles.
So, at a lower minimum at least a 300 foot wide fireball with an upward extreme of possibly 740 plus feet.
Much worse than a sharp stick in the eye.
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