Category: Syria

BREAKING: Israel Bombs Damascus Airport

BY STEPHEN GREEN 12:40 PM ON OCTOBER 12, 2023
BREAKING: Israel Bombs Damascus Airport
(Screencap via X.)
Israeli missiles bombed landing strips at Syria’s Damascus Airport and at its second-largest airport in Aleppo. It is likely no coincidence that a Meraj Airlines passenger jet reportedly carrying Iranian foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian was on its way to Damascus at the time of the bombing. European’s Visegrád 24 reported that the flight also had “several commanders of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps on board and several tons of anti-tank missiles for Hezbollah.”

Reports that Amirabdollahian was on board are credible since flight trackers show that the Meraj flight is a jet typically reserved for Amirabdollahian’s use. But another report claims that he was on a different flight. I’ll update as more reliable information comes in. Still waiting for more sources to confirm the anti-tank weapons.

Here’s a video of the strike:

As the BBC noted today, both airports “not only handle civil aviation but also host military bases, which are reportedly transit points for Iranian arms sent to Hezbollah.” No casualties have been reported at either airport, both of which Syria says remain closed until the landing strips can be repaired.

So score one for the good guys. And before we continue, I don’t want to hear one got-dam word about how Israel is “escalating” the conflict. Hezbollah is dedicated to Israel’s destruction and is funded and supported by both Damascus and Tehran. The fighting between Israel and Iran/Iranian Proxies has been going on for years. The only escalation going on started on Saturday with Hamas’ terror invasion of Israel.

Now, back to today’s news.

Syrian state media — there is no other kind — admitted that the strikes had “damaged landing strips in the two airports, putting them out of service.”

Presumably, those anti-tank missiles could have been used by Hezbollah to attack Israel from the north, as fighting rages further south in and around the Gaza strip. There was a scare earlier this week of Hezbollah paragliders coming from Lebanon, but that report turned out to be false.

Tehran says the Meraj flight has since landed in Baghdad, quite a bit further east than its planned destination. This flight tracker shows how Amirabdollahian’s flight was forced to turn tail for Baghdad:

In Gaza, the war continues to intensify.

As part of the IDF’s siege of the Gaza Strip, electricity and water have both been shut off by Israel. (I’ll have a report later today showing how Hamas made Gaza dependent on Israel for both, just for our VIPs.) Jerusalem has said that it’ll restore both just as soon as Hamas releases the 150 or so hostages it kidnapped during the terror invasion earlier this week.

Hamas, naturally, has refused.

I’d like to shake Rep. Dean Philips’ hand right now. It’s nice to see that there’s at least one Minnesota Democrat — I’m giving you the side-eye, Ilhan Omar — who knows the difference between good and evil.

In today’s other bit of good news, Israeli Air Force jets reportedly bombed the bejeebus out of Hamas’ Intelligence and Security headquarters. Maybe the IAF got lucky and the I&S team was holding a big meeting of all the top people there this morning.

Exit Question: Does this war have a name yet? Is it the Gaza War? Hamas War? Israeli-Palestinian War? Maybe we shouldn’t try to name it until we know who all the participants are.

30,830 Turks, 6,386 Afghans, 1,613 Pakistanis, 659 Iranians, 538 Syrians caught at Southern border since 2021

  BY 

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2023/10/30830-turks-6386-afghans-1613-pakistanis-659-iranians-538-syrians-caught-at-southern-border-since-2021;

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.

Once again, what could possibly go wrong? What could be more wonderful than diversity?

“Thousands of ‘special interest aliens’ from Middle East countries stopped at southern border since 2021: data,” by Adam Shaw, Bill Melugin, and Griff Jenkins, Fox News, October 10, 2023:

Thousands of “special interest aliens” from numerous countries, including the Middle East, have been arrested by Border Patrol agents while attempting to cross the U.S. southern border illegally over the last two years, according to internal Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data leaked to Fox News.

“Special interest aliens” are people from countries identified by the U.S. government as having conditions that promote or protect terrorism or potentially pose some sort of national security threat to the U.S.

That data, confirmed by multiple CBP sources and reflects apprehensions between ports of entry between October 2021 and October 2023, shows that agents encountered 6,386 nationals from Afghanistan in that period as well as 3,153 from Egypt, 659 from Iran and 538 from Syria.

Agents also encountered 13,624 from Uzbekistan, 30,830 from Turkey, 1,613 from Pakistan, 164 from Lebanon, 185 from Jordan, 139 from Yemen, 123 from Iraq, and 15,594 from Mauritania. The data does not include information on how many of those migrants were removed or who were released into the U.S. with a court date….

Border Patrol sources tell Fox they have extreme concerns about the people coming across from special interest countries, given they have little to no way to vet them. Unless they have committed a crime in the U.S. or are on a federal watch list, agents have no way of knowing their criminal history because their countries do not share data with the U.S., so there is nothing to match their name against when authorities run their fingerprints….