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Israeli air strikes kill 12 in Gaza
Palestinian medical officials said early Saturday that a total of 12 people had been killed and 10 injured in a series of Israeli air strikes in the Gaza Strip.
AFP,
10 March, 2012
The Israeli raids came as Palestinians fired dozens of rockets and mortar rounds into southern Israel,wounding four people, one seriously, Israeli military sources said.
One Israeli strike, on a car travelling in the Tel El-Hawa neighbourhood west of Gaza City, killed the head of the militant Popular Resistance Committees, Zohair al-Qaisi, and fellow member Mahmud Hanani, the group said.
Both the PRC and the military wing of Hamas threatened to retaliate for Qaisi's death.
The Al Quds Brigades, the military arm of Islamic Jihad, said that strikes on the east side of the city had killed its members Obeid al-Gharabli, Mohammed Harara, Hazem Qoureqa and Shadi Seqali.
It said that another two of its members, Fayeq Saad and Moatasem Hajaj, were also killed in strikes.
The Israeli attacks came in response to Palestinian mortar and rocket fire which started on Friday morning. The Israeli military said that in the course of the day about 30 rockets and mortar rounds had landed in southern Israel.
The PRC and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed offshoot of Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas's Fatah movement, issued statements claiming to have fired rockets into Israel on Friday.
The official Palestinian WAFA news agency quoted a statement by the Fatah-dominated Palestinan Authority condemning the Israeli retaliation, saying it had created a "negative environment" that would "escalate the circle of violence in the region."
The Israeli military said Qaisi "was among the leaders who planned, funded and directed" a deadly cross-border attack into southern Israel from Egypt's Sinai last August.
In that incident, gunmen carried out a coordinated series of shooting ambushes on buses and cars on Route 12, which runs along the Egyptian border some 20 kilometres (12 miles) north of the Red Sea resort of Eilat.
The shootings took place over several hours, leaving eight dead and more than 25 wounded.
The military statement said Qaisi was also involved in a 2008 attack on a terminal for pumping fuel from Israel into the Gaza Strip, in which two Israeli civilians were killed.
The statement added that both the dead men were "responsible for planning a combined terror attack that was to take place via Sinai in the coming days."
It said that other strikes were aimed at men about to fire rockets into Israel.
Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, has maintained a tacit truce with Israel, but other armed Palestinian groups regularly fire rockets and mortars across the border, which can spark air strikes in response.
The relatively small Popular Resistance Committees is one of the most active, and it pledged to avenge its men's deaths.
"We are not committed to the truce; we will respond very strongly to this (Israeli) crime," Abu Ataya, a spokesman for the PRC's military wing, the Al-Nasser Salahadin Brigades, told AFP.
Hamas's military wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades also warned of retribution.
"Al-Qassam Brigades mourns the martyr leader Zohair Qaisi and martyr Mahmud Hanani and confirms that their blood will not be wasted, the enemy's crime will be a curse on him," it said in a statement.
Its political leaders were more restrained.
"The recent Zionist escalation is an unjustified crime, it comes as a part of the destabilization of a stable security situation in the Gaza Strip" the Hamas-run Gaza government's interior ministry said in a statement.
"We hold the international community fully responsible for the attacks."
Before Friday's air strikes, Israeli army radio quoted what it called "senior military sources" as saying the army "does not intend to allow the firing to continue."
US intelligence: Assad firmly in charge in Syria
One year after the unrest in Syria started President Bashar Assad is still firmly in control of his country, US intelligence services say, despite their leaders claiming his regime is doomed
10 March, 2012
Speaking on condition of anonymity, three US senior intelligence officials have said Assad holds a strong position in Syria and his inner circle is also very determined to back the cause and remain "steadfast," AP reports.
Intelligence officers noted that the disorganized Syrian opposition is providing little challenge to the regime and that the political leaders of the Syrian National Council do not work as a team and often fight among themselves.
Meanwhile, government forces are very well equipped, US intelligence experts assert. They describe Syria as a formidable military power, with some 330,000 soldiers on active duty, surveillance drones and a dense network of air-defense installations that would make it difficult to establish a no-fly zone.
“That leadership is going to fight very hard,” said one of them.
According to the experts, Assad and his inner circle believe that the unrest is being driven by external forces and their army is sufficiently well equipped to withstand anything but a large-scale military intervention.
While the statement did not speak directly about the timeline of the conflict, it made an impression that the conflict may last several more months if not longer.
The assessment comes with many senior US officials predicting the end of the Assad regime in the very near future. US President Barack Obama recently said that Assad’s fall is a matter of time.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has also repeatedly stated that the regime’s days are numbered and Assad cannot hold on to power in the long term.
The US defense secretary, Leon Panetta, has claimed that sanctions and diplomatic pressure are already “having a significant impact on Assad” and are weakening his regime. Israel has also predicted that the end is near for Assad.
Just remember that Britain is leading the pack in the move to war.
Syria in turmoil: Assad launches fresh shelling of civilian houses
Kofi Annan's ceasefire mission falters as the tanks roll in to besiege the city of Idlib
10 March, 2012
Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has told Kofi Annan, the joint UN and Arab League envoy, that there can be no political progress in his country while "terrorist groups" are spreading chaos.
"Syria is ready to make a success of any honest effort to find a solution for the events it is witnessing," the Syrian Arab news agency (Sana) quoted Assad as saying. "No political dialogue or political activity can succeed while there are armed terrorist groups operating and spreading chaos and instability."
The rebuff to the peace mission of Annan, the former UN secretary-general, who travelled to Damascus to seek an end to the violence, came as Syrian troops launched a fresh assault on Idlib city, and international divisions over the Syrian crisis multiplied.
According to the state news agency, Assad told Annan that, while his country was ready for "any honest effort" to settle almost a year of violence, his precondition was the cessation of attacks by armed opposition groups.
Annan's visit marks a new international push for peace nearly a year after protesters took to the streets to demand Assad's removal from power, inspired by Arab spring uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Despite the violence, which according to the UN has claimed more than 7,500 lives, the international community has been extremely reluctant to back military intervention.
For article GO HERE
Bahrain protesters march in huge rally
9 March, 2012
Bahraini protesters held a huge rally demanding democratic change in the largest anti-government demonstration since unrest destabilised the strategically important Gulf kingdom last year.
Activists estimated that more than 200,000 people on Friday flooded a suburban highway in an area populated by the majority Shia, who have been demanding political reform from the minority Sunni-led monarchy.
The government said the protest, encouraged by the island’s most senior Shia cleric, numbered closer to 100,000.
For article GO HERE
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