!! ALERT !! WAR BEGINNING STAGES???

http://debka.com/article/23708/Syrian-Lebanese-border-partly-erased-by-hectic-war-traffic-Israeli-air-strike-Monday-mostly-inside-Syria


Syrian-Lebanese border partly erased by hectic war traffic. Israeli air strike Monday mostly inside Syria
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report February 26, 2014, 9:43 AM (IST)
Tags:  [url=http://debka.com/search/tag/Israeli air strike/]Israeli air strike, [/url] Hizballah,  [url=http://debka.com/search/tag/Syrian war/]Syrian war, [/url] missiles,

Nabi Sheet highway crosses from Syria to Lebanon

According to Middle East sources, Israel’s air strikes Monday, Feb. 24, were far more limited in scope than presented – no more than one or two warplanes which aimed four rockets at a single target, an SS-21 surface missile launcher on the Syrian side. Four Hizballah operatives were killed.
The hectic traffic of arms, men and smuggling networks between Syria and Lebanon, run by Hizballah and the Syrian military, has virtually obliterated large sections of the border between the two countries.  A broad military zone has taken its place, which is characterized by lofty peaks 1,600 meters high, deep gulches and narrow winding roads through wild vegetation. Traffic moving along those roads is hard to identify.
Hizballah arms and missile stores in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley are in free use as strategic reserve supply centers for the units – both Hizballah and Syrian - fighting in border sectors such as the battles in the Qalamoun mountain range.
Brig. Gen. Ellie Sharvit, commander of the Navy base in Haifa, touched on this situation Tuesday, when he noted that Israel presumes that any weapons systems reaching Syria have also come into the hands of he Lebanese Hizballah. Israel is therefore on a constant state of alert. He mentioned advanced Yakhont shore-sea missiles as well as top products of Iran’s and Syria’s military industries in this regard.
Brig. Sharvit was the first IDF officer to confirm debkafile’s reporting in the past year that large quantities of weapons were moving between Syria and Lebanon. This traffic is by now by and large out of the IDF’s control - except for pinpointed strikes. Any attempt to seal the border to this illicit traffic would be unrealistic.
Most Israeli military officials are still trying to present President Bashar Assad as losing the Syrian war and Hizballah’s military capabilities as being eroded.
Contrary to this view, our Middle East sources describe the old Lebanese-Syrian border area as having been transformed into the busy hive of a burgeoning international Shiite legion of mercenaries, who are arriving in ever larger numbers from outside the region. Hizballah has opened European recruiting centers for the Syrian war effort in Bulgaria, Hungary, Albania and Kosovo. More than 1,000 mercenaries are already undergoing brief instruction at its Beqaa Valley training facilities. After they are familiarized with the weapons in the use of the Syrian army and Hizballah, they are sent across into battle.

http://debka.com/article/23702/Assad%E2%80%99s-army-hits-border-areas-as-US-Israel-Jordan-enlarge-South-Syrian-foothold-

Assad’s army hits border areas as US, Israel, Jordan enlarge South Syrian foothold
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report February 23, 2014, 1:37 PM (IST)
Tags:  [url=http://debka.com/search/tag/Syrian rebels/]Syrian rebels, [/url] Quneitra,  [url=http://debka.com/search/tag/Syrian war/]Syrian war, [/url] Israel-Syria,  Golan,  CIA,  Jordan,

New Syrian rebel command post at Quneitra

The Jordanian government Sunday, Feb. 23 vehemently denied reports that Syrian rebels were undergoing training by American and its own military instructors and being sent back to fight government forces. According to US intelligence sources, those training camps have been turning out 250 rebel fighters per course and some 1,000 trainees all told are already in action on Syria’s battlefields. The Syrian government journal Tishrin has repeatedly warned Jordan that it is “playing with fire.”
On Feb. 18, Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, quite openly visited injured Syrians at an IDF military field hospital on the Golan. They chatted with wounded rebel soldiers. But on the quiet, our sources report that they took a good look at Quneitra (pop: 10,000), which is located close to Israeli lines on the Syrian side of the enclave.
debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report that a new Syrian rebel command center has been set up there, with the help of the US, Jordan and Israel. The CIA is investing great effort into restoring the combat capabilities of the disbanded Free Syrian Army and incorporating splinter militias likewise opposed to radical Islamist groups in a revived rebel fighting force under the command of Brig.Gen. Abdul-Illah al-Bashir
Based in the tiny Golan town of Quneitra, he has been given the grand title of “Chief of Staff of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army.”
Gen. al-Bashir defected from the Syrian army in 2012. His main qualification for the new job is his membership of the Syrian Bedouin Al Nuaim tribe, which ranges through the Golan and southern Syria. When he defected, he was followed by army officers who are fellow tribesmen.
The rebel force shaping up in Quneitra therefore consists of many indigenous fighters and a large component of local Al Nuaim tribesmen.
It is more likely than not that the new pro-American Syrian rebel force mustered under Israel’s nose is also guaranteed Israeli military insurance against a surprise attack or any hostile attempts to wipe it out. It stands to reason that this function was closely examined during the visit Israeli leaders paid to the Golan last week and is also the subject of intensive talks between Jerusalem and Washington.
But meanwhile Syrian President Bashar Assad is not standing idle.
Exactly a week ago, Saturday night, Feb. 15, the Syrian army ambushed a group of trained Syrian rebels as they crossed in from Jordan. Middle East sources reported that many were killed and others took to their heels and fled.
In the last two days, the Syrian army has moved in for an offensive on the environs of Quneitra to corner the new rebel command center. Two outlying villages, Rasm al-Hour and Rasm al-Sad, fell into the hands of government forces.
Clearly, the US-Israeli-Jordanian effort to establish a rebel-controlled border strip across the Syrian border will not be a cake walk.
Furthermore, a bomb car which exploded Sunday at the town of Atmeh on the Syrian-Iraqi border targeted a rebel-run military field hospital. At least nine people were killed.
This was another message from Damascus – this one picked up in Jerusalem that the field hospital set up on the Golan for injured Syrians is also in the sights of the Syrian army.

http://debka.com/article/23706/Western-sources-Israel-Air-Force-hits-SS-21-batteries-first-attack-in-Syrian-war-on-nuclear-capable-missiles

Western sources: Israel Air Force hits SS-21 batteries, first attack in Syrian war on nuclear-capable missiles
DEBKAfile Special Report February 25, 2014, 9:34 AM (IST)
Tags:  [url=http://debka.com/search/tag/Israeli air strike/]Israeli air strike, [/url] Lebanon,  Syria,  [url=http://debka.com/search/tag/Russian missiles/]Russian missiles, [/url] Qalamoun,

The Russian-made Tochka - SS-21 Scarab
Western military and intelligence sources report that Israeli Air Force strikes in Lebanon and Syria overnight Monday, Feb. 24 came on the heels of the first use in the three-year Syrian war of a Russian-made nuclear-capable Tochka (Point) surface missile - NATO-coded SS-21 Scarab - which carries a 480-kilo warhead with a range of 70 km. These missiles were fired earlier Monday in the Syrian-Hizballah battle for Yabroud. There was no information about the effect of the Israeli strikes.
According to Lebanese sources, however, the target was a cluster of five Hizballah bases or command posts in the Lebanese Beqaa Valley. Hizballah casualties were reported.
That was one Lebanese version of the incident. In the absence of independent confirmation or official information, different sources offered a variety of alternative targets.
Some sources named them as missile-launchers fired from Lebanon in support of the Hizballah-Syrian army battle for the strategic town of Yabroud, the last Syrian rebel stronghold in the Qalamoun Mts just across the Syrian border. This town, 80 kilometers north of Damascus, has held out against two months of vicious combat.
A fourth version claims that the air strikes hit a convoy ferrying weapons from Hizballah’s Lebanese stores into Syria or, alternatively, convoys transporting missiles in the opposite direction, from Syria to Hizballah bases in Lebanon.
The Air Force went into action the day after Israeli Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz commented during a visit to the Golan that a close watch is being kept on the movements of Iranian weapons and ammo present in all the troubled sectors of the region. This is of extreme concern to Israel, he said.
As he spoke, Syrian intelligence detonated a large car bomb at a military hospital near the Iraqi border treating Syrian rebel casualties. The attack cost 14 lives, including several wounded men.
debkafile’s military and intelligence sources estimate that Israel’s action has left two big question marks:
1. Was it a one-off, or the start of a series?
2.  Will Hizballah or Syria hit back?  
Up until now, any military actions Israel undertook in Syria and Lebanon were cloaked in secrecy and never admitted by the IDF, even when images emerged of the damage caused. This time, there are no images and even Lebanese security sources can’t agree on the targets that were hit.
That is because the shoe is now on the other foot. The Iranian Al Qods Brigades chief Gen. Qassem Soleimani has ordered the Israeli air strikes to be kept under tight wraps.
Earlier this month, Soleimani was placed officially in charge of Iran’s military interventions in the battlefields of Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and the Palestinian “resistance.”   
This was part of the distribution of tasks ordered by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to hold Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) chiefs back from sabotaging Iran’s nuclear negotiations with the six powers. Diplomacy was left in the province of President Hassan Rouhani, but his government was barred from interfering in Iran’s external military operations.
Khamenei’s solution for separating the two rival camps in Tehran has placed Israel and its armed forces face to face for the first time with the Iranian command center directly orchestrating its Arab adversaries.
It is one of the ruthless Gen. Soleimani’s principles never to let any assault on Iran or its interests go unanswered. Israel may therefore expect retaliation for its air strikes – though not necessarily from Syria or Lebanon.

http://debka.com/article/23704/Russian-units-transferred-from-securing-the-Sochi-games-to-the-Ukraine-border


Russian units transferred from securing the Sochi games to the Ukraine border
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report February 24, 2014, 6:08 PM (IST)
Tags:  Ukraine,  Russia,  [url=http://debka.com/search/tag/military option/]military option, [/url] [url=http://debka.com/search/tag/Dmitry Medvedev/]Dmitry Medvedev, [/url] Crimea,

Russian airborne forcesdebkafile’s military sources report that units of the Russian forces which formed a steel ring around the Olympic Winter Games that ended in Sochi Sunday were flown and shipped Monday, Feb. 24 to Russian bases at the Ukrainian Crimean port of Sevastopol, as Moscow refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new authorities in Kiev.
Giant Russian Air Force transports and rapid deployment forces were placed on alert at the Rostov on-Don base east of the predominantly Russian-speaking southeastern Ukrainian town of Donetsk.
Russian military movements were also sighted near Belgorod, a Russian town 40 kilometers from the Ukraine border and north of its second largest town of Kharkov. There, too, most of the inhabitants are Russian speaking with a strong affinity to Moscow – in contrast to their European-oriented compatriots in the capital, Kiev.
These military movements were accompanied by sharp Russian rhetoric in Moscow’s first direct response to the tumult in Kiev and ouster of the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, against whom Kiev police Monday issued a warrant for mass murder.
Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Monday: “Today I see no legitimate Ukrainian partners for a dialogue. If people crossing Kyiv in black masks and Kalashnikov rifles are considered a government, it will be difficult for us to work with such a government," he said, calling it “the result of a mutiny.”
The prime minister spoke of a “real threat to our interests, and to our citizens’ lives and health.”
With these comments, the Russian leader laid down a pretext for Russian military intervention in Ukraine. It was Moscow’s response to the warning issued by US National Security Adviser Susan Rice Sunday, Feb. 23, that “it would be a grave mistake for Russia to send military force.”
An area emerging as a potential flashpoint in the Ukraine crisis is the Crimean peninsula in the south.
This territory and its port of Sevastopol was part of Russian imperial might from the 18th century until in 1954 when Nikita Khrushchev, an ethnic Ukrainian, transferred it to Ukrainian control – a step bitterly resented by Russians ever since.
When Ukraine broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991, it took Crimea with it. Moscow has since leased the strategically critical naval base as a deep-water port for the Russian Black Sea Fleet, with easy access to the Mediterranean. The lease is paid up to 2042. Ethnic Russians make up almost 60 per cent of the population, with Ukrainians and Crimean Tatars accounting for the rest. If Ukrainian turmoil continues and it faces a real threat of breaking up, Vladimir Putin may seize the opportunity to recover the peninsula. The Russian military force in Sebastopol was already beefed up Monday.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/putin-orders-combat-readiness-tests-for-western-central-russian-troops.html

Putin orders ‘combat readiness’ tests for western, central Russian troops

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RT
February 26, 2014
Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered an urgent military drill to test the combat readiness of the armed forces across western and central Russia. The drill included troops dealing with mock security and terrorist threats.
The surprise drill tested ground troops, Air Force, airborne troops and aerospace defense, according to Russia’s Defense Minister, Sergey Shoigu.
Putin ordered to “test combat readiness of troops in dealing with crisis situations that threaten the military security of the country, as well as with antiterrorist, sanitary and epidemiological, or technogenic situations,” Shoigu said.
According to the Defense Minister, the drill, which started at 14:00 GMT, will be held from February 26 until March 3 in two stages. The second stage involves an opposing-force exercise with the participation of Russia’s Northern and Baltic fleet and bomb strike drills.
While Western media was quick to connect the drill to the situation in Ukraine, such exercises were proposed by Putin as early as last September and followed massive 2013 drills.
Full story here.
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