Rebels close to Syria's central city of Hama are being pounded with bombs and shells as the regime wages a fierce assault to reverse losses in rural areas home to many of its Alawite supporters.

The thunder of numerous explosions in a cluster of villages some 25 kilometres (15 miles) northwest of Hama triggered an exodus of hundreds of local residents aboard cars, motorbikes and tractors on Sunday, AFP reporters saw.

"We had to flee because of the shelling," a 60-year-old woman, Fatma al-Omar, said as she sheltered in a roadside olive grove several kilometres away with around two dozen women and children.

"It's very bad. Our children have no idea why they had to suddenly leave their homes."

As rain came, the group clambered back into their two tractor-hitched trailers normally used to haul livestock to continue their slow journey away from their homes.

They were part of a flow of Sunni refugees fleeing north, into territory controlled by the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Their Alawite neighbours, fearing Sunni insurgents, escaped to regime-controlled areas elsewhere: to Hama, or west to the coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus.

Menacing low-altitude rumbles from the regime's jet fighters were heard, but low cloud hid them from view. The Russian-made aircraft dropped at least three bombs.

Black smoke from one of the blasts rose above a village surrounded by recently planted green fields.

An ad-hoc field hospital manned by seven men, including a doctor and a former pharmacy owner, was set up at one field, ready to give first aid.

"We've treated around 30 to 35 people in the past two days, all of them civilians hurt in their homes by the regime's bombs," the doctor, Wael Mahmud, said.

Those grievously injured were sent to hospitals in northern Syria or in Turkey, he said, showing his truckload of basic medical supplies by way of explanation.

In Kurnaz, more than a dozen rebel fighters took up defensive positions with light weapons against Syrian army tanks located around four kilometres away which were firing shells around them. Close hits forced the fighters to take shelter in basements in the village.

"Almost everyone has left here and the 12 villages around here," local sheikh Abu Abar said, surrounded by fighters.

The few vehicles driving against the outflow of civilians were FSA pick-up trucks with heavy machineguns mounted, headed towards the frontline.

"This area is a red line for the regime. There are many Alawites in this area so the regime is fighting very hard to take it back," the regional rebel commander, a former army special forces colonel who defected early in the war and who goes by the name Abu Hamza, told AFP.

His forces had taken Kurnaz and the area around it one month ago.

Now, he admitted, they were likely soon to be rolled back by the regime offensive.

"The regime is concentrating its forces in Hama. Our men are good fighters but our only problem is the lack of ammunition," he said. "We don't have enough weapons to defend our positions."

Hama is seen as one of Syria's strategic cities in the war.

Located about halfway along a highway linking the capital Damascus in the south to Aleppo in the north, it is home to a mixed population of Alawites -- the Shiite offshoot to which President Bashar al-Assad's family belongs -- as well as Sunnis and Christians.

The regime is determined to keep control of it and surrounding areas to hold at bay the rebels, who mainly roam the countryside but lack the means to dislodge Assad's army from cities.

Abu Hamza blamed the West for not following through with rhetoric supporting Syria's armed opposition -- and stressed that had provided an opportunity for the Al-Nusra Front, an Islamist fighting force that has proved very effective.

Al-Nusra is deemed a "terrorist" organisation by the United States for its links to the Al-Qaeda franchise in Iraq.

Hamza was circumspect about the group, saying only that "they came to help the Syrian people, unlike the international community" and were welcomed for that.

The Syrian people, he added, would decide what sort of country they wanted whenever Assad's regime fell.

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President Bashar al-Assad's chances of staying in power are "shrinking by the day," Dmitri Medvedev said on Sunday in Russia's sternest criticism of the Syrian regime to date.

Mr Assad, a Russian protégé who has survived thanks in part to Moscow's use of its veto at the United Nations security council, made a "grave, perhaps fatal error" in his failure to initiate political reform earlier, Prime Minister Medvedev said.

"He should have acted much more quickly and reached out to the peaceful opposition which was ready to sit at the negotiating table with him," he said in an interview with CNN on the sidelines of the Davos World Economic Forum conference.

"It seems to me that his chances of staying are shrinking day by day."

Mr Medvedev’s unexected intervention is unlikely to have a major effect on Russian policy, which is directed personally by President Vladimir Putin.

Mr Putin’s over-riding concern is to preserve a key ally and prevent a geopolitical triumph by either the United States or Islamists - a clear possibility if he dropped his backing for Mr Assad. Russia, by Syria’s own admission, continues to provide arms to Damascus.

Russia, by Syria's own admission, continues to provide arms to Damascus.

Mr Medvedev himself went on to say that a compromise had to be found that did not lead to Mr Assad being "executed like Gaddafi or be carried to court sessions on a stretcher like Hosni Mubarak"– referring to the deposed leaders of Libya and Egypt.

But his words are an indication of the seriousness of Mr Assad's predicament.

By contrast, Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, last week, suggested that there were no imminent signs of Mr Assad being forced out, with regime air attacks currently keeping rebel forces at bay.

Oxfam, in a report published on Monday, said there had been a sharp increase in the number of refugees in the past week – threefold in Jordan alone. In total, about 670,000 people have fled the country, on top of millions more who have left their homes for safer areas.

A United Nations appeal for £1.5 billion to provide aid, though, has reached only three per cent of its target, and criticism is growing of countries which support either side in the conflict not doing enough to deal with the consequences.

Justine Greening, the international development secretary, announced that Britain would provide £21 million to bring its total aid package to £89.5 million, and called on other countries to do more to help Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, the neighbours playing host to most of those fleeing Syria.

"It's clear the humanitarian crisis is going to be a protracted one," she told The Daily Telegraph, while on her way from visiting a camp in Jordan to a donors' conference in Kuwait. "We need countries attending this conference to provide help."

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Many of the latest reports out of Syria indicate that President Bashar al-Assad has regained the upper hand against the rebels.

And the UN special envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, said as much on Tuesday when he acknowledged that the regime "may be able to hold onto power for now."

Assad reportedly told visitors that the Syrian army has "regained the initiative on the ground to a very high degree and achieved important results" as "armed groups received several hard blows recently," according to Lebanese daily Al Akbhar.

Akbhar's report makes it sound like Assad regime's new tactics — leaving non-significant areas only to bomb them and force the population to live under rebel rule without basic necessities — are going according to plan. Assad reportedly said the regime has "stopped fighters from controlling whole [provinces]" and all of the key strategic points around Damascus have "remained safe, especially the airport road.”

There are also reports that the Syrian Army has launched counteroffensives in the north in Homs and around Hamas as rebels struggle to resist because of a lack of ammunition. Meanwhile rebels in the northeast are clashing with Kurdish rebels — an example of rebel infighting that Assad is increasingly counting on.

On the other hand, Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev recently said Assad's chances of staying in power are "shrinking by the day," and Martin Chulov of The Guardian reported that rebels are now camping out in the hills above Assad's ancestral homeland and sanctuary.

And last week U.S. ambassador to Syria Robert Ford, who told CNN that Assad's mother, Anisa Makhlouf, has fled the country for the United Arab Emirates, adding that members of the regime "little by little, are flaking off ... They themselves know they are losing."

So perhaps Assad remains defiant and a little crazy because he knows, as a Russian diplomat said last month, that he will be killed by his own people or the opposition unless he successfully puts down the revolution.

But maybe his newfound aplomb comes from the fact that rebels appear much less capable of toppling him right now, and the West knows it.

SEE ALSO: Assad Made A Brilliant And Brutal Move To Beat Back Syrian Rebels

ASSAD: ‘I Will Win, Even If Damascus Is Destroyed’

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On Tuesday Israel launched an airstrike against a convoy of trucks moving near the Lebanon-Syria border, a senior U.S. official and a Lebanese security official told The Wall Street Journal.

The strike was originally reported by Reuters.

UPDATE [14:56 EST] Syria claims that Israel actually bombed a military research center near Damascus.

"The Israeli air force blew up a convoy which had just crossed the border from Syria into Lebanon," an unnamed security source told Agence France-Press.

A "well-placed defense analyst" told John Ray of ITV News that the strike was in Hezbollah Lebanese territory and the missile struck a "truck of scud and antiaircraft missiles" headed to members of the Iran-backed militant group. WSJ reported that "it wasn't immediately clear on which side of the border it occurred."

Two officials told The Associated Press Israel had been planning to hit a shipment of weapons for the last few days because it contained Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, which would be strategically "game-changing" in the hands of Hezbollah.

Israel recently moved one of its Iron Dome missile defense batteries to the north of the country, which means there are now two in the area.

On Monday Israel Army Radio reported that security chief Yaakov Amidror was headed to Russia to discuss the Syrian crisis. On Tuesday Al-Monitor reported that IDF intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi was traveling to Washington for consultations with American officials.

Israel has indicated that any sign that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was losing control of his chemical and/or conventional weapons could trigger Israeli military strikes.

On Tuesday Israeli Air Force (IAF) chief Major-General Amir Eshel told an international aerospace conference that the IAF was involved in "a campaign between wars," working with Israeli intelligence agencies in often covert missions "to reduce the immediate threats [and] to create better conditions in which we will be able to win the wars, when they happen."

An Israeli Defense Force spokeswoman declined to comment on the reports.

Vice Premier Silvan Shalom, when asked on Israel Radio if there was unusual activity on the northern front, said:  "The entire world has said more than once that it takes developments in Syria very seriously, developments which can be in negative directions ... Of course any development which is a development in a negative direction would be something that needs stopping and prevention."

In October Sudan accused Israel of bombing a arms factory that was widely believed to be owned by Iran and used to supply weapons to Hamas in Gaza.

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The Syrian military claims that early Wednesday Israeli warplanes bombed a military research center northwest of Damascus — not a convoy of trucks headed to Lebanon as previously reported.

Earlier reports of the airstrike indicated that the jets targeted a convoy of trucks carrying Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles near the Syria-Lebanon border.

Syrian state news agency SANA reports the strike destroyed a military research center "responsible for raising the levels of resistance and self-defense" in Damascus, killing two people and wounding five others.

Damascus is located about 10 miles from the Lebanese border. 

From SANA:

“The General Command of the Army and Armed Forces said ... Israeli warplanes snuck from the north of Al-Sheikh Mountain, flying at a low altitude and below radars, heading to Jamraya in Damascus Countryside ... and bombarded the location before sneaking away."

Earlier reports indicated that the strike occurred in Lebanon but now the consensus is that the attack occurred "deep inside Syrian territory"— making it the first time since 2007 that the Israeli Air Force has attacked a target in Syria.

Now the big question is whether it was a convoy of trucks or a military research building that was bombed.

The Syrian military "stressed that the allegations of some media outlets that the Israeli warplanes targeted a convoy headed from Syria to Lebanon are baseless, with the General Command affirming that the Israeli warplane targeted a scientific research facility in blatant violation of Syrian sovereignty and airspace."

American officials told The New York Times the Israelis had notified the U.S. about the attack, and that the U.S. believes the target was a convoy taking weapons to Lebanon.

Either way, the strike is a significant escalation of the geopolitical conflict in the region as a top aide to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday that any "attack on Syria is considered (an) attack on Iran and Iran’s allies.”

The Times notes that Avi Dichter, the minister for the home front, told Israel Radio on Tuesday that options to prevent Syria from using or transferring chemical or conventional weapons included deterrence and “attempts to hit the stockpiles.”

SEE ALSO: Israeli Jets Struck A Convoy Entering Lebanon From Syria

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Both Syrian and Iran are making bold threats following a surprise Israeli airstrike in Syrian territory on Wednesday.

Iran's deputy foreign minister told state TV that the "Israeli bombing in Syria will have grave consequences on Tel Aviv,"Haaretz reports.

On Saturday a top aide to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that any "attack on Syria is considered (an) attack on Iran and Iran’s allies.”

Syria's ambassador to Lebanon said the Damascus has "the option and the surprise to retaliate,"Al Jazeera reports.

Early Wednesday Israeli jets bombed a target in southwest Syria.

Syria, Iran and Hezbollah contend that the Israeli target was a military research center in Jamraya, three miles from Damascus and eight miles from the Lebanese border.

U.S. officials, Syrian rebels and regional security sources told Reuters the warplanes hit a weapons convoy carrying antiaircraft missiles from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon while rebels attacked the facility at about the same time with "six 120 millimetre mortars."

Either way there is no doubt that the Israeli strike has raised the geopolitical conflict in the region to the next level. Mark Urban of Newsnight details how the attack is one more sign of an alarming deterioration of the security situation across the Middle East.

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi condemned the strike, saying that the "Israeli aggression... is a clear violation of the territory of an Arab state and of its sovereignty, going against the UN charter and the rules of international law."

Russia's foreign ministry said that "we are dealing with unprovoked attacks on targets on the territory of a sovereign country, which blatantly violates the UN Charter and is unacceptable, no matter the motives to justify it."

Israeli security chief Yaakov Amidror is currently in Russia to discuss the Syrian crisis while Israel Defense Force intelligence chief Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi is in Washington for consultations with American officials.

On Tuesday Israeli Minister of Home Front Defence Avi Dichter told Israel Radio that options to prevent Syria from using or transferring chemical or conventional weapons included deterrence and “attempts to hit the stockpiles."

Diplomats in the Middle East familiar with Jamraya told Reuters that the sprawling complex is a crucial element of Syria's missile program that also has a chemical weapons facility.

A Free Syrian Army statement said that Iranian, Russian and Hezbollah members were at the complex helping develop chemical and other weapons including 'barrel bombs' used by Assad's air force.

Agence France-Presse notes that earlier this week Israel transferred two batteries of its Iron Dome anti-missile system to the the country's north, and demand for gas masks almost tripled in January.

Former top military intelligence official Danny Rothschild recently told army radio that Israel "could face an attack by Hezbollah or possibly Syria, that's why we must prepare our defences and Iron Dome is part of that."

On Tuesday Israeli Air Force (IAF) chief Major-General Amir Eshel told an international aerospace conference that the IAF was involved in "a campaign between wars," working with Israeli intelligence agencies in often covert missions "to reduce the immediate threats [and] to create better conditions in which we will be able to win the wars, when they happen."

SEE ALSO: Israeli Jets Struck A Convoy Entering Lebanon From Syria [REPORTS]

SYRIA: Israel Bombed A Military Research Center Near Damascus

There Isn't A Ruler In The World Who Wants To Use Chemical Weapons

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When members of Jabhat al-Nusra — the Syrian opposition's best fighting force— took control of the town of Mayadin in eastern Syria, they immediately commandeered the grain silos and the nearby al-Ward oil and gas field.

Now, according the Reuters, the band of al-Qaeda in Iraq-affiliated rebels give children free loaves of bread if they attend hardline Islamic teachings and sell oil to local Syrian government authorities.

Residents of Mayadin, a town of 54,000 close to the Iraqi border, said Nusra has been transporting crude oil in large tankers 28 miles north to Deir al-Zor, where the government still has a presence.

And local authorities in Deir al-Zor are so strapped that they'll buy oil off the group that their president considers terrorists.

The contradictory reality in Mayadin exemplifies Nusra as a whole:

• They are allied with the secular Free Syrian Army but want to establish a seventh-century style Islamic Caliphate.

• They execute highly effective suicide attacks against the regime but also battle other rebel groups.

• Some of its more than 5,000 members are leading on the front lines while others are hoarding resources (read: power) in remote places like Mayadin.

It's clear at this point that the opposition needs Nusra if they're going to topple the regime. The rub is that the group may be hijacking a rebellion initially driven by "the love of a freedom [and] the love of a country" to "establish a crueler regime than the tyranny under Assad."

Neverthless, the bottom line is that al-Nusra becomes stronger as the 22-month conflict drags on and will be a force to reckoned with when it ends.

"The civil war in Syria is a gift from the sky for al-Nusra; they are coasting off its energy,"Noman Benotman, the lead author of a report analyzing their rise, told CNN.

SEE ALSO: In One Week Al-Nusra Showed They'll Either Win Or Destroy The Syrian Revolution

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Israeli attack on Syria could be beginning of new strategy as Assad's grip on power weakens

BEIRUT (AP) — An Israeli air attack staged in Syria this week may be a sign of things to come.

Israeli military officials appear to have concluded that the risks of attacking Syria are worth taking when compared to the dangers of allowing sophisticated weapons to reach Hezbollah guerrillas in neighboring Lebanon.

With Syrian President Bashar Assad's grip on power weakening, Israeli officials fear he could soon lose control over his substantial arsenal of chemical and advanced weapons, which could slip into the hands of Hezbollah or other hostile groups. These concerns, combined with Hezbollah's own domestic problems, mean further military action could be likely.

Tzachi Hanegbi, an incoming lawmaker in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud Party and a former chairman of parliament's influential foreign affairs and defense committee, signaled Thursday that Israel could be compelled to act on its own. While Israel's preference is for Western powers to gain control over Syria's arms stockpile, he said there are no signs of that happening.

"Israel finds itself, like it has many times in the past, facing a dilemma that only it knows how to respond to. And it could well be that we will reach a stage where we will have to make decisions," Hanegbi told Israel's Army Radio Thursday. Hanegbi, like other Israeli officials, would not confirm Israeli involvement in the airstrike.

In this week's incident, Israeli warplanes conducted a rare airstrike inside Syria, according to U.S. officials who said the target was a convoy carrying anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militant group allied with Syria and Iran.

The Syrian military has denied the existence of any weapons shipment and said a military research facility outside Damascus was hit.

On Thursday, Syria threatened to retaliate, while Hezbollah condemned the attack as "barbaric aggression." Iran, which supplies arms to Syria, Hezbollah and the Hamas militant group in Gaza, said the airstrike would have significant implications for Israel. Syrian ally Russia said it appeared to be an unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation.

Syria's ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Abdul-Karim Ali, said Damascus "has the option and the capacity to surprise in retaliation." He told Hezbollah's al-Ahd news website that it was up to the relevant authorities to choose the time and place.

For now, Israeli officials seem to be playing down the threats.

"Israel took a big gamble out of the belief that Iran and Hezbollah won't retaliate. The question is, 'Are they right or not?'" said Moshe Maoz, a professor emeritus at Hebrew University who specializes in Syria.

Officials believe that Assad's position in Syria is so precarious that he cannot risk opening a new front with Israel. With an estimated 60,000 Syrians killed in the civil war, Israeli officials also think it's too late for Assad to rally his bitterly divided nation behind him.

"Syria is in such a bad state right now that an Israeli retaliation to a Syrian action would be harsh and could topple the regime. Therefore Syria is not responding," Maoz said.

Israel is far more worried about the threat of sophisticated weapons reaching Hezbollah. In a monthlong 2006 war, Hezbollah fired some 4,000 rockets and missiles into Israel before the conflict ended in a stalemate. Israeli officials believe the guerrilla group has restocked its arsenal with tens of thousands of missiles, some capable of striking deep inside the Jewish state.

Resigned to this fact, Israel has set a number of "red lines" for Hezbollah that it says are unacceptable, in particular the acquisition of new weapons that it believes would change the balance of power in the region. These include chemical weapons and sophisticated anti-aircraft and surface-to-sea missiles.

This week's airstrike targeted trucks containing Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, according to a U.S. official. The trucks were next to the military research facility identified by the Syrians, and the strike hit both the trucks and the facility, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the operation.

If the SA-17s were to have reached Hezbollah, they would have greatly inhibited the Israeli air force's ability to operate in Lebanon. Israel has frequently flown sorties over Lebanese skies since 2006.

The airstrike is part of an Israeli strategy known to military planners as "the policy of prevention," or the "war between wars." In recent years, Israel is believed to have launched a number of covert missions, including airstrikes in Sudan and assassinations of key Hezbollah and Hamas militants, aimed at disrupting the flow of weapons to its Iranian-backed enemies. Israel has never acknowledged involvement.

Israeli security officials believe that Hezbollah, despite its claims of victory, is still deterred by the experience of the 2006 war, in which it lost hundreds of fighters. Instead of a direct war, Israel fears Hezbollah might try to strike Israeli or Jewish targets around the world. Israel has accused Hezbollah of a string of attacks on Israeli targets in recent years, including a deadly attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last July.

The Israeli airstrike comes at a particularly sensitive and vulnerable time for Hezbollah in Lebanon. Despite its formidable weapons arsenal and political clout in the country, the group's credibility and maneuvering space has been significantly reduced in the past few years.

Hezbollah still suffers from the fallout of the 2006 war, which many in Lebanon accused it of provoking by kidnapping soldiers from the border area. Since then, the group has come under increasing pressure at home to disarm, leading to sectarian tensions between its Shiite supporters and Sunnis from the opposing camp that have often spilled into deadly street fighting.

When Hezbollah sent an Iranian-made reconnaissance drone over Israel in November, the group boasted of its capabilities — but critics in Lebanon slammed it for embarking on a unilateral adventure that could provoke Israel.

Despite persistent reports and accusations that Hezbollah members are fighting alongside the military in Syria, Hezbollah has largely approached the Syria conflict with caution, mindful that any action it takes could backfire.

"In different times, Hezbollah would have reacted to Israel's surgical strike, but not today," said Bilal Saab, director of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, North America. "This is a time for hunkering down and weathering the storm."

The uprising in Syria, the main transit point of weapons brought from Iran to Hezbollah, presents the group with its toughest challenge since its inception in 1982.

The group could still get weapons, but would struggle to get them as easily without the Syria supply route. Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah's public support for the Assad regime has proved costly and the group's reputation has taken a severe beating. Former champions of the group now describe it as hypocritical for supporting Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt, but not in Syria.

As for Israel and Syria, although they are bitter enemies, they have avoided direct conflict for most of the past 40 years. Israel has been careful to stay out of Syria's civil war, not wanting to be seen as supporting any side in the conflict.

While the attack overnight Tuesday, believed to be the first by Israel on Syrian soil since 2007, appeared to come out of nowhere, signs of impending action were evident in recent days.

On Jan. 23, the day after national elections, Netanyahu convened top security officials for an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Syria.

One of the meeting participants, Vice Premier Silvan Shalom, warned this week that Israel could be forced to carry out a pre-emptive attack under certain circumstances. The same day, Israel suddenly moved a new, state-of-the-art rocket-defense system to the northern city of Haifa, which was hit hard by Hezbollah rocket fire during a 2006 war.

Uzi Rabi, a military analyst at Tel Aviv University's Dayan Center, said the attack was a "kind of message" sent by Israel to Syria and Hezbollah.

"It says we do have capabilities when it comes to intelligence gathering ... and this would serve as kind of a warning sign to Hezbollah not to transfer chemical weaponry from Syria to Hezbollah," he said.

___

Federman reported from Jerusalem.

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Much like its air campaign against Hamas targets inside the Gaza strip, Israel's airstrike in Syria looks like a well-timed tactical move—and the confusing media reports regarding the attack may be part of the plan.

The Jerusalem Post reports that a Western diplomatic source told Iraqi daily Azzaman that the attack took place more than 48 hours before it was leaked by Israel.

Furthermore, the source said the reports about a strike on a convoy carrying weapons into Lebanon were probably meant to divert attention away from the operation's main objective: To use F-16 aircraft to fire at least eight guided missiles at a military research center near Damascus.

On Wednesday U.S. officials — who said they were given forewarning of the strike — told The Wall Street Journal and other outlets that the Israelis were targeting a convoy of trucks allegedly carrying Russian-made SA-17 missiles to Hezbollah.

Syria insisted that the reports about the convoy attack were "baseless," and that the real target was a military research center in Jamraya, which lies about three miles from Damascus and eight miles from the Lebanese border.

Maj. Gen. Adnan Salo, a former head of the chemical weapons unit in the Syrian Army who defected and is now in Turkey, told The New York Times that the complex produces both conventional and chemical weapons.

The Azzaman source said that the complex is heavily fortified and houses experts from Russia and has been guarded for years by at least three thousand Iranian Revolutionary Guards, adding that the Guards suffered heavy casualties in the strike.

The Syrian rebel commander in the Damascus area told Reuters that rebels attacked the facility with "six 120 millimeter mortars" at about the same time that Israeli planes bombed the convoy.

But there has been no confirmation of the convoy attack besides unnamed diplomatic and rebel sources saying it occurred three miles south of where the main Damascus-Beirut highway crosses the border into Lebanon.

Nevertheless, both strikes fit Israel's strategy.

The Associated Press reports that "Israeli military officials appear to have concluded that the risks of attacking Syria are worth taking when compared to the dangers of allowing sophisticated weapons to reach Hezbollah guerrillas."

Transfer of the missiles "would be a game changer ... by challenging the ability of Israel's air force to carry out daily surveillance flights over southern Lebanon and eastern Lebanon along the border with Syria," Jonathan Spyer, an analyst at the Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, told USA Today.

The attack comes at a time when Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is too weak to risk opening a new front with Israel by retaliating.

"Syria is in such a bad state right now that an Israeli retaliation to a Syrian action would be harsh and could topple the regime," Moshe Maoz, a professor emeritus at Hebrew University who specializes in Syria, told AP. "Therefore Syria is not responding."

Meanwhile Iran is busy propping up Assad. On Thursday U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said there are signs that Iran is sending growing numbers of people and increasingly sophisticated weaponry to Assad since he's using up his weaponry.

And Israel appears to have the support of the West. On Thursday UK Foreign Secretary William Hague said that rather than condemning the the attack, attention should be focused on addressing ''the root causes'' of the Syrian crisis. The White House warned Syria not to transfer weapons to Hezbollah.

Israeli lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi told the AP that Israel has no choice but to launch pinpoint strikes on suspected transfers.

"Israel's preference would be if a Western entity would control these weapons systems," Hanegbi said. "But because it appears the world is not prepared to do what was done in Libya or other places, then Israel finds itself like it has many times in the past facing a dilemma that only it knows how to respond to."

Whether one believes that Israel attacked a convoy or the Jamraya facility— or both — matters less than the fact that Israel has dealt a forceful blow to Syria and Iran while sending a stark message to Hezbollah. 

SEE ALSO: Israel Couldn't Have Chosen A Better Time To Strike Gaza

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A Russian judge who decided to spend his vacation moonlighting as a war correspondent in Syria survived being shot in the face and arm this week, Robert Mackey and Ellen Barry of The New York Times report.

Sergey Aleksandrovich Berezhnoy, 57, was hit while accompanying the crew of the Abkhazian Network News Agency (ANNA) as it reported on a unit of the Syrian Army fighting rebel forces in the Damascus suburb of Darayya.

A video recorded by the ANNA crew shows Berezhnoy—a former military intelligence officer and prize-winning writer—taking pictures before the incident and includes footage the emergency surgery he underwent in a Syrian military hospital.

Berezhnoy volunteered to “see with his own eyes and feel with his own soul” what was happening on the ground in Syria, according to the chairman of the Belgorod branch of the Union of Russian Writers.

The Times notes that his boss told a Russian news site he knew that Berezhnoy—the deputy chairman of a provincial arbitration court in the Russian city of Belgorod—went on vacation but had no idea where he had gone until his misadventure surfaced.

Here's the video:

On Thursday Berezhnoy told the Voice of Russia: “Now I feel fine. They are making a dressing. Of course I am coming back to Russia. But I want to keep working here until I finished everything I planned. What is going on in Syria hurts me. They are destroying a culture, destroying a civilization, destroying the flower of a nation. And it is very frightening. The whole world needs to fight for Syria.”

Berezhnoy is not the first foreigner to vacation in the Syrian muck. Toshifumi Fujimoto, 45, a bored trucker, took a vacation and embedded with rebel fighters in Aleppo to take pictures. Fujimoto, who described himself as "a combination of samurai and kamikaze,” told reporters that snuck into the country from Turkey.

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US Vice President Joe Biden said on Saturday the US and its partners were pushing to help strengthen the Syrian opposition, insisting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was a "tyrant" and must go.

Biden was speaking on the second day of security talks in the German city of Munich, where he is later due to hold talks on Syria with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Syrian opposition chief Moaz al-Khatib.

The US has provided "more than $50 million in non-lethal assistance to the Syrian opposition and are working alongside our partners to help them become more inclusive and cohesive," he said.

But he referred to recent comments by US President Barack Obama, saying, "We are under no illusions, the days ahead will continue to be very difficult but the opposition continues to grow stronger".

"President Obama and I, and nearly all of our partners and allies, are convinced that President Assad, a tyrant, hell bent on clinging to power, is no longer fit to lead the Syrian people and he must go," Biden said.

"We can all agree... on the increasingly desperate plight of the Syrian people and the responsibility of the international community to address that plight," he added.

He said it was "no secret" that Russia and the United States have "serious differences" on issues such as Syria.

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The Israeli air strike on a convoy weapons and military complex near Damascus, on the night between Jan. 29 and 30 has something in common with a similar air strike.

In 2007, Israeli Air Force bombers entered and egressed the Syrian airspace almost completely undetected by the Syrian air defenses.

On Sept. 6, 2007, ten F-15 and F-16 jets attacked a nuclear facility being built in Syria. The success of that mission, dubbed "Operation Orchard" was largely attributed to effectiveness of the Israeli Electronic Warfare platforms That supported the air strike and made the Syrian radars blind: some sources Believe That Operation Orchard saw the baptism of fire of the Suter airborne network system against Syrian radar systems from some ELINT aircraft.

It is quite likely that Israel's EW capabilities, most probably further improved since 2007 (someone speculated Israel is capable to inject malware from its F-16s), have played a major role in the recent strike that hit a target located only 5 kilometers from Assad's headquarters.

Although the current status of the SAM (Surface to Air Missile) coverage around Damascus is quite difficult to assess, since some of the batteries protecting the capital town may have been hit by the rebels sabotaged or activity, the area is still believed to be heavily defended by several Soviet-made anti-aircraft system (even if most of all not so up to date).

The following image comes from 2010's survey of the Syrian SAM deployment, published on the interesting Sean O'Connor's IMINT & Analysis blog.

Although probably outdated, it still gives an idea of how crowded SAM systems of the surrounding area is Damascus.

In June 2012, Syrian anti-aircraft artillery battery downed a Turkish Air Force RF-4E Phantom that had violated Syrian airspace at low altitude the over the Mediterranean Sea, thus proving Damascus That's air defense are still somehow dreadful for enemy fighter jets.

Even though EW coverage (embedded in the strike package or supporting it from distance) has probably Contributed to the successful outcome of the air strike making the bombers somehow "stealthy", another key factor in the attack was the relatively short distance of the target from the border area and the local orography. That has helped the Israeli jets flying at low altitude Achieving some terrain masking .

The following image, drawn by The Aviationist contributor's Giuliano Ranieri, shows a possible ingress route that exploits the terrain masking provided by the Mt Heron and a scarcely populated area overflies.

It's just a hypothesis, still, likely, not too far from the route actually flown by the Israeli fighters.

Some videos have been uploaded to Liveleak allegedly showing the Israeli fighter over Damascus at dawn. The one you can watch here has nothing to do with the air strike though: the type of contrails, the type of formation and, above all, the altitude of the planes depicted in the footage are not consistent with the IAF raid.

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New information suggests that Israel's airstrike in Syria last week was less about stopping a border shipment and more of a preemptive strike.

Last week Western diplomats said the strike targeted a convoy carrying Russian SA-17 antiaircraft missiles that was on its way to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Syria said the target was a military research center near Damascus.

Footage aired by Syrian state TV and comments from U.S. officials suggest that both sides were partially correct since Israel bombed a convoy at the key military facility. And the jets may have directly bombed the facility itself as well.

Syrian TV broadcasted what it said were images of the strike's aftermath, which included vehicles that appeared to be directly hit by missiles as well as buildings that appeared to have been damaged by secondary blasts.

A senior U.S. military official told The New York Times that the damage to the buildings was likely “due to the bombs which targeted the vehicles” carrying sophisticated antiaircraft weapons in addition to “the secondary explosions from the missiles.” Two unnamed American officials told The Washington Post the same thing.

But the location of the strike—outside of the Jamraya facility and not in Lebanese territory or near the Lebanese border—and types of weapons alleged hit challenge claims that the sophisticated weapons systems were on their way to Hezbollah.

From The Times:

... there are reasons to doubt whether the antiaircraft equipment was truly heading to Hezbollah. Outside experts like Ruslan R. Aliyev, an analyst with the Center for the Analysis of Strategy and Technologies, a defense research group in Moscow, said the SA-17’s were too sophisticated for Hezbollah to use and would be easily detected. He also said such a transfer would alienate Russia and make it impossible for Moscow to sustain its support for Mr. Assad’s government.

Here's some of the footage from Syria TV:

So the answer to where exactly the strike occurred raises questions about Israel's justification for the attack, which was "fully backed" by the U.S. There are also questions about which targets were directly hit.

On Friday Time magazine cited a Western intelligence official who said that beyond the convoy, "at least one to two additional targets were hit the same night,"indicating that the damaged may be more extensive than either side willing to acknowledge.

From Time:

Among the buildings leveled at the military complex at Jamarya, outside Damascus, were warehouses stocked with equipment necessary for the deployment of chemical and biological weapons, relatively complicated systems typically manned by specially trained forces.

Other officials told Time that Israel had a “green light” from Washington to launch more such strikes on targets it deems as threat for weapon proliferation.

Dany Shoham, a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, noted to The Times that the Jamarya compound—which lies about eight miles from the Lebanese border—is a principal Syrian facility for "upgrading chemical and biological war agents" and "upgrading dispersal and delivery systems for those agents.”

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In an op-ed published in Al Ahkbar, Lebanese professor As'ad AbuKhalil details the dilemma now facing Assad after Israel executed an airstrike in Syria last week.

AbuKhalil, a professor at Cal State Stanislaus who is a staunch critic of Israel and U.S. foreign policy, states that "despite its pathetic lack of a response to past acts of Israeli aggression against Syria, [the Syrian regime] is now in a more difficult position."

From AlAhkbar:

If it does not act in response to Israeli aggression, it will be quite embarrassing for the regime to justify the use of fighter jets and helicopter gunships in its internal conflict (for purposes of regime preservation), but not for defending Syrian territory against Israeli attacks. The Syrian army, which has by and large remained loyal to the regime, could face major defections in protest against this regime reluctance. But if the regime responds to Israeli attacks, Israel can inflict severe damage to the military power of the regime which is needed to protect the regime. Either way, the regime could suffer, although it would change the contours of the conflict if it were to respond against Israel in a major way.

The dilemma will likely persist as intelligence officials told Time that Israel had a “green light” from the U.S. to launch more strikes on targets it deems as threat for conventional and/or unconventional weapon proliferation.

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In July 2011 Israeli President Shimon Peres said that "Assad must go."

But Syria's southern neighbor is facing an increasingly dangerous situation on its borders as the rule of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad weakens.

“Israel will miss the Assads,” a veteran intelligence source told The London Times. In reference to keeping peace in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights he added: “The Assads, father and son, were very nasty people. But with them, we knew that a promise was a promise, and an agreement was solid as the boulders of Mount Hermon.”

As the Syrian civil war continues into its 23rd month, Israel is considering creating a buffer zone reaching up to 10 miles inside Syria to secure the 47-mile border against the threat of Islamic radicals in the area.

Ranaan Gissin, who served as senior advisor to Israel’s former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, upped the ante when he told Al-Arabiya that "Revolutionary Guards [IRGC] from Iran, Hezbollah and other global jihads groups are taking control over some parts of the border" as Assad deploys his resources elsewhere.

Israel has already deployed a third Iron Dome missile defense system near its northern borders, strengthened its border fence while upgrading intelligence-gathering capabilities in the area, and bombed a Syrian military facility near Damascus.

The strike was partly meant to deter Hezbollah—the powerful Shiite group against which Israel fought a devastating 2006 war—from acquiring sophisticated antiaircraft and chemical weapons from Assad.

Despite the increasing danger, Israel is not about to switch sides in the conflict.

Officials told UPI and The Times of London that Israel is considering further airstrikes in the area, including one on an Iranian electronic listening post in the Golan Heights.

At the end of the day, Israel wants to see Assad fall because it would weaken Iran.

"There is no doubt that the very falling of this central link in the Iranian array is a blow to Iran and Hezbollah, and something Iran is doing everything to prevent,"a senior security official told Agence France-Press.

In August an IRGC member told The Wall Street Journal the Quds force—the foreign operations arm of the IRGC—is sending soldiers to Syria because "fighting for Syria is an integral part of keeping the Shiite Crescent intact," referring to the geographical link between Shiites from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon and Syria.

SEE ALSO: Israel's Strike On Syria Was A Brilliant Tactical Move

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Rand Paul appeared at the Heritage Foundation Wednesday morning to give his break-out speech detailing his vision for American foreign policy.

Though the speech lacked in specifics, Paul made some savvy observations about the unintended consequences of intervention.

He questioned the wisdom of attacking Iran:

Yuval Diskin, the former chief of Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security service, recently said “an attack against Iran might cause it to speed up its nuclear program.”

In the [Iran] debate, I made the point that while I think it unwise to declare that we will contain a nuclear Iran, I think it equally unwise to say we will never contain a nuclear Iran. War should never be our only option.

Likewise the wisdom of arming rebels in Syria:

Likewise, today’s “Truman” caucus wants boots on the ground and weapons in the hands of freedom fighters everywhere, including Syrian rebels. Perhaps, we might want to ask the opinion of the one million Syrian Christians, many of whom fled Iraq when our Shiite allies were installed. Perhaps, we might want to ask: will the Syrian rebels respect the rights of Christians, women, and other ethnic minorities?

Paul then went into the old story of covertly arming Mujaheddin fighters in Afghanistan in the 80s and how that eventually backfired on the U.S.

This really only touches the surface of unintended consequences in the Middle East.

For a fresher example, Paul might have talked about the Iraq War and Syrian chemical weapons: How the U.S. invasion across Iraq's southern border happened near concurrently with the scuttling of chemical weapons to escape the country's northern border into Syria, where they may or may not have been used just months ago. It was a mission to contain supposed nuclear Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) that may have enabled the spread of another kind of WMD.

This history is worth considering as another president talks of "containing" WMDs in new Middle Eastern countries.

There is more than one way to skin the Persian cat.

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The military research facility that Syria said had been hit by an Israeli airstrike last week appears to be largely unscathed while the road next to it appears scorched, according to satellite images from Digital Globe broadcast on Israel's Channel 2.

The images, taken February 4, corroborate the notion that Israel bombed a group of vehicles that were parked at the Jamraya research center near Damascus.

Last week Western diplomats and security officials said the strike targeted a convoy — either in Lebanese territory or on the highway three miles south of the border — that was carrying Russian SA-17 antiaircraft missiles that was on its way to Hezbollah.

Syria said the target was the buildings at the facility, which lies about 8 miles from the border.

The truth appears to be in the middle. One thing that's still unclear is if the convoy at the facility was indeed carrying Russian weapons headed to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Here's the facility eight months before the attack:

Maj. Gen. Adnan Salo, a former head of the chemical weapons unit in the Syrian Army who defected and is now in Turkey, told The New York Times that the complex produces both conventional and chemical weapons.

Dany Shoham, a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, told The Times that the Jamarya compound is a principal Syrian facility for "upgrading chemical and biological war agents" and "upgrading dispersal and delivery systems for those agents.” 

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A video posted online apparently shows Syrian soldiers Usher’s song “Yeah!” after a battle, according to the Associated Press.

In full gear they dance and form a conga line—as smoke billows from a building in the background—before chanting a common battle cry of the President Bashar al-Assad's regime (“With our souls, our blood, we sacrifice for you Bashar!”) and shooting their weapons in the air.

The video is noteworthy in that it captures a moment that runs counter to the media's regular perception and depiction of what war is. It is a moment of war, as is.

More than 60,000 people have died so far in the 23-month conflict while more than 500,000 have fled the country and 1.2 million more are internally displaced.

SEE ALSO:  Suddenly It Looks Like Assad Could Win The Syrian War

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Free Syrian Army (FSA) fighters attempting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad have recently received a big boost in the form of heavy weapons, James Miller of EA WorldView reports.

For months foreign jihadists from groups like al-Nusra have been the most organized and best rebel fighters, but their brutality and vision of a seventh-century style Islamic Caliphate concerns secular and moderate Syrians as well as Western governments.

Last month Eliot Higgins of the Brown Moses blog reported FSA had new weapons — including several kinds of rocket-propelled grenades [RPGs], rocket and grenade launchers, and recoilless rifles — that seemed to have originated from the former-Yugoslavia.

Around Jan. 1 the weapons began appearing in the Daraa Province at the Jordan border, and this week Higgins reported that the weapons have spread northward to the Damascus, Hama, and Aleppo regions as well as Deir Ez Zor in the east.

From Miller: 

While foreign weapons have been seen in Syria, we have not encountered them on this scale. All this suggests a new, organized, and well-funded effort is under way to ensure that "moderate" fighters are capturing territory and weakening the Assad regime.

The influx of weapons has apparently made a big difference on the ground as FSA fighters have captured ground from Daraa city to Damascus to both the south and north of Aleppo city. Here are some examples:

A rebel firing a M60 Recoilless Rifle Busra al-Harir in Daraa:

Rebels with an RPG-22 near the Damascus International Airport:

And here is Colonel Abdul-Jabbar Mohammed Aqidi — who Higgins identifies as one of two members of the "armament committee" for the FSA'a Northern Front — showing off a M79 rocket launcher to FSA fighters:

Miller notes that it's "too early to tell whether there are enough weapons to make a long-term impact" because none of these weapons can effectively counter Assad's fighter jets.

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A car with Syrian plates exploded on the Turkish side of a border crossing on Monday, killing at least five Syrians and five Turkish citizens, according to Hurriyet Daily News.

"We don't know whether this was a suicide bomb or whether a car that was smuggling petrol across the border blew up," one Turkish official told Reuters.

Part of the roof collapsed on the gate that was blown open, which lies across for the rebel held Syrian gate of Bab al-Hawa in the southern Turkish province of Hatay.

John Williams of BBC News notes that most journalists use the crossings to get to Syria's north.

The car was parked at a crowded lot filled with trucks ready to enter Syria with humanitarian supplies, a Turkish foreign ministry official told Agence France-Presse.

Turkish politician Hasan Akgöl told NTV that the blast "is an attempt of provocation" since it is an area in which "rebel forces are strong and the Syrian army members cannot get near.”

The event is the first major spillover of the Syrian civil war since mortar shells from Syria killed five Turkish civilians in October.

Aaron Stein of the Center for Economics and Foreign Policy, Istanbul-based thinktank, writes that the blast "will force [Turlish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan] to address the mounting violence in Syria, which will in turn draw fire from critics for his failure to implement a workable Syria policy." He adds that "escalation remains unlikely at this time."

Turkey has been the primary hub for opposition forces outside of Syria and the former Assad ally has taken in close to 200,000 of refugees from the 23-month conflict.

SEE ALSO: Satellite Images Show Israeli Airstrike At Syrian Military Research Facility

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