The Daily Caller & Adam Chandler / The Wire – 2014-09-24 00:19:21
http://news.yahoo.com/u-military-releases-video-f-22-strike-against-215023884.html
US Military Releases Video of F-22 Strike Against ISIS
The Daily Caller
(September 23, 2014) — The Pentagon on Tuesday released an image of the Syrian-based ISIS command center targeted by the first F-22 Raptors ever used in actual combat, along with a video of the successful strike.
The image … shows a before and after of the ISIS command and control center located in Raqqa, and the video below shot by an unspecified aircraft shows the bombs dropped by the fifth-generation, multi-role stealth fighters hitting their target and detonating.
The F-22s, stationed at a base in the United Arab Emirates, were used Monday night in a coalition strike against extremist fighters carried out by the US and five Middle Eastern allies against ISIS and an al Qaeda base in northwestern Syria.
Russia Condemns US Airstrikes on ISIS
And al-Qaeda; Assad Approves
Adam Chandler / The Wire
(September 23, 2014) — In the wake of the first American-led airstrikes against Islamic State forces in Syria, we’re learning that the operation did not just focus on ISIS installations and its oil trade, but also the al-Nusra Front as well. According to Reuters, strikes against the al Qaeda-linked group in northern Syria wrought a death toll of about 50.
Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that the US-led effort involved coordination with the Free Syrian Army, which has also just become the recipient of some American weapons.
This is a joint coalition effort of which the Syrian opposition is a full-fledged member,” said Oubai Shahbandar, a senior adviser to the coalition who was briefed of the US strikes in advance. He was addressing concerns some elements of the opposition had that the US would turn its back on the armed group and instead partner with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to defeat Islamic State militants.”
Russia was quick to condemn the airstrikes. The Washington Post noted that Russian President Vladimir Putin — the patron saint of territorial integrity — decried the airstrikes as a violation of Syria’s sovereignty.
Russia is insistent that US measures to target militants in Syria lack authority without buy-in from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — a point Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon Tuesday.”
Not only did Syrian dictator Bashar Assad refrain from lashing out against the American-led airstrikes, he seemingly gave a very coded thumbs up:
Meanwhile, in southern Syria, Israel used a Patriot missile to shoot down a Syrian jet that was said to have encroached into Israeli airspace. From Haaretz:
The jet was toppled over the Syrian side of the Quneitra border, after it had flown 800 meters west of the border into Israel and turned around. The decision to down the jet was made after 1:20 minutes of flight; when the Patriot hit the plane, the Syrian pilots had already turned around and flown back into their territory.
Here is some wild footage taken by Syrian rebels of the pilots parachuting down:
This was the first time a Syrian jet had been shot down since the early 1980s.
As we noted last week, United Nations peacekeepers fled the Syrian side of the Israeli-Syria border after key crossings were wrested from Assad forces by the al-Nusra Front. The peacekeepers had been in place for 40 years.
If you count the Israeli action along with the United States and its reported partners in Tuesday’s airstrikes (Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain), six different countries attacked Syria on Tuesday.
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