Category Archives: Lands

Hezbollah’s intervention in Syria: Nasrallah promises Assad victory as violence spills into Lebanon

The Los Angeles Times reports: The leader of the militant group Hezbollah on Saturday aligned his powerful movement squarely behind the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad and vowed victory against Syrian rebels, whom he assailed as proxy warriors for the West and Israel.

The televised comments by Hassan Nasrallah were the most definitive to date rallying Hezbollah to the defense of Assad’s government, which has been trying to put down a revolt by rebels supported by the United States and its allies.

The comments came as Syrian government forces, assisted by Hezbollah militiamen, intensified their assault on the strategic Syrian town of Qusair, near the Lebanese border. Both sides reported fierce fighting in Qusair six days after Syrian forces and their Hezbollah allies launched an attack on the longtime rebel stronghold.

“Syria is the backbone of the resistance, and the resistance cannot stand with folded hands while its backbone is being broken,” Nasrallah said in a televised speech, referring to Hezbollah’s signature “resistance” to the state of Israel.

“The battle is ours,” Nasrallah added, “and I promise you victory.”

The Independent reports: Two rockets hit a Beirut neighbourhood earlier today raising fears that the bloody civil war in Syria is increasingly seeping across the border into Lebanon.

AFP reports: Twenty-two Hizbullah members were killed in fighting alongside Syrian government forces against rebels for control of the town of Qusayr, a source close to the Lebanese group said on Sunday.

“There were 22 killed on Saturday. Nine bodies were repatriated the same day and the rest on Sunday,” the source said, declining to be named.

The Syrian army announced that on Saturday its forces had infiltrated Dabaa military airport, a rebel post north of Qusayr, a week into a Hizbullah-backed offensive to recapture the strategic central town near the Lebanese border.

Martin Chulov reports: The workmen had been busy in the room where Hezbollah honours its dead. In one corner of the martyrs’ cemetery in south Beirut, four women shrouded in black sat cross-legged near a new grave, reading from the Qu’ran. Metres away, the yellow flag of the militant group covered a freshly covered hole in a white marble floor. The scent of burning incense wafted across the room.

Another grave, its concrete seal barely dry, had been partly completed nearby. There were seven fresh holes in all; and the grave digger was never far away. More bodies were due on Friday. At this rate, the tiny room – a shrine to Hezbollah’s cause as much as to the men who died fighting for it – would soon be full.

The flurry of activity in the martyrs’ cemetery marks the busiest period for the militant movement since the 2006 war with Israel, in which an estimated 400 of its members died. All the new graves here have been dug in the past 10 days. Many others have been sealed with the familiar yellow and green standard in villages across Lebanon where the rumblings of a very different war have now boiled over into sacrifice and loss.

The newly arrived dead have ushered in a new reality for Hezbollah, one that has taken more than two years of uprising and war in neighbouring Syria to publicly acknowledge: all the fallen have died fighting Arabs in Syria, not Jews in Israel. Such a shift in orientation, for so long denied by the group’s leadership, is now being worn as a badge of honour by the families of the dead.

Many of the next of kin interviewed by the Guardian said that their sons and brothers had been defending Lebanon from foreign plotters – in this case Salafists from the east rather than Zionists from the south. “The threat to us comes from all directions,” said one grieving relative in the Beirut suburb of Chiyah on Friday. “But behind it all is the hidden hand of Israel.”

Oy veh! It’s one thing to be an anti-Zionist, but when people start seeing “the hidden hand of Israel” lurking everywhere, they start to sound more like devotees of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

At this time, instead of obsessing about mischief emanating from the Jewish state, it might be more appropriate to be asking what “resistance” means if its backbone has been provided by Bashar al-Assad.

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Does Israel have a terminal disease?

One of the strange things about a terminal disease is that people often receive a diagnosis that amounts to a death sentence at a time when — as far as they can tell — they are in perfect health. To be told that death is lurking just over the horizon might lead one person to reflect on the meaning of mortality, while another presses forward and lives like there is no tomorrow.

In a strongly secular and death-denying culture, the latter response is less likely to be seen as an expression of denial and more as a life-affirming form of optimism.

You just discovered you have cancer and now you’re about to do a triathlon. Good for you!

Ethan Bronner writes: Israel today offers a set of paradoxes: Jewish Israelis seem in some ways happier and more united than in the past, as if choosing not to solve their most difficult challenge has opened up a space for shalom bayit — peace at home. Yes, all those internal tensions still exist, but the shared belief that there is no solution to their biggest problem has forged an odd kind of solidarity.

Indeed, Israel has never been richer, safer, more culturally productive or more dynamic. Terrorism is on the wane. Yet the occupation grinds on next door with little attention to its consequences. Moreover, as the power balance has shifted from the European elite, Israel has never felt more Middle Eastern in its popular culture, music and public displays of religion. Yet it is increasingly cut off from its region, which despises it perhaps more than ever. Finally, while the secular bourgeoisie, represented by Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid Party, has forged an unexpected alliance with West Bank settlers, represented by Naftali Bennett’s Habayit Hayehudi Party, aimed at reducing the political power of the ultra-Orthodox, alarm over the failure to address the Palestinian problem has grown in a surprising place — among some of the former princes of the Zionist right wing.

At a Jerusalem cafe one noon, Dan Meridor, the former Likud minister and son of right-wing Zionist aristocracy, could not stop talking about the Palestinians.

“It is a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads,” he said. “We are living on illusions. We must do everything we can on the ground to increase the separation between us and the Palestinians so that the idea of one state will go away. But we are doing nothing.”

Mr. Meridor, nursing an American coffee at the cafe near the house his parents bought many decades ago in the upscale Rehavia neighborhood, sounded like two other public figures from famous right-wing families — Ehud Olmert, the former prime minister, and Tzipi Livni, the justice minister and chief peace negotiator. Both have made a series of emotional speeches begging Israelis to take the Palestinian issue seriously. They are getting little traction.

The Israeli left is still there, of course, but in increasingly insignificant knots. Two Israeli friends in Jaffa, from which tens of thousands of Palestinians left or were driven out in 1948, have beautifully renovated a house, even preserving a pre-state lemon tree in the courtyard. They are friendly with the Arabs who live nearby. Their children refused military service in protest over the West Bank occupation. And on the outside of their house they have put up a plaque noting that until 1948 the structure was the home of the Khader family, a tiny homage to a destroyed world.

But the family is rare. Mr. Lapid, the rising star of Israeli politics, is a former television host who agrees that something must be done about the Palestinians. But in an interview he offers no specifics other than hoping Mr. Kerry will pressure them to return to the negotiating table under conditions they have long rejected. Mr. Lapid, who spoke in the outdoor section of his neighborhood cafe in north Tel Aviv on a fragrant spring afternoon, was relaxed and buff in his long-sleeved black T-shirt and black jeans. Well-off Tel Avivians at nearby tables argued into their iPhones. Mr. Lapid said Israel should not change its settlement policy to lure the Palestinians to negotiations, nor should any part of Jerusalem become the capital of the Palestinian state he says he longs for. He has not reached out to any Palestinian politicians nor spoken publicly on the issue. As finance minister, he is focused on closing the government’s deficit.

Mr. Lapid may be a political novice but he knows the public mood. A former senior aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed, over a Jerusalem lunch of toasted bagels and salad, that most Israelis considered the peace process irrelevant because they believed that the Palestinians had no interest in a deal, especially in the current Middle Eastern context of rising Islamism. “Debating the peace process to most Israelis is the equivalent of debating the color of the shirt you will wear when landing on Mars,” he said.

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EDL raises risk of terrorism, say most Britons

British Future: Most people believe that far right groups like the English Defence League stir up hatred and violence in Britain in a way which increases the risk of future terrorist incidents. A rising proportion of Britons say they would never join the EDL – a view held by 84% of people who have heard of the group – according to new polling released this weekend.

After the brutal murder of a soldier in Woolwich by Islamist extremists, new polling published this weekend shows a clear public rejection of effort by one extreme fringe to capitalise on the activities of another, instead capturing growing opposition to the far right. Most of the public want the media to be more wary of giving either extremist group a media platform to spread hateful views.

61 per cent agree that ‘organisations like the English Defence League are stirring up hatred and violence between groups and making the risk of attacks of this kind more likely’ according to a new Survation poll, published in the Mail on Sunday. Only 14 per cent disagree.

Meanwhile, The Independent reports: Evidence emerged last night that one of the suspects involved in the killing of the British soldier Lee Rigby was well known to anti-terror police and the security services for at least three years before the brutal Woolwich attack. Michael Adebolajo was arrested in Kenya under suspicion of being at the centre of an al-Qa’ida-inspired plot in 2010, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.

He was one of seven men arrested by Kenyan police after landing on an island off the Kenyan coast in November 2010. Local press reports of the arrests referred to Mr Adebolajo as a “Nigerian with a British passport” who was “suspected of masterminding the racket”. Police claimed the men were travelling to Somalia to join the ranks of the al-Shabaab terrorist group. His family claimed he was held in detention and tortured before being deported back to Britain without charge.

After the incident, members of his family said he was “pestered” by MI5 agents pressuring him to become an informant for them and infiltrate radical Islamic extremist groups. Relatives said other family members were also harassed and questioned by the UK authorities. In an exclusive interview with The IoS, Mr Adebolajo’s brother-in law claimed constant demands to get him to spy on Muslim clerics might have pushed him over the edge.

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No kissing please, we’re Islamists

AFP/Al-Akhbar: Islamists attacked a group of kissing couples who locked lips in a Turkish metro station to protest a morality campaign by the authorities in Ankara, the local press reported on Sunday.

One person was stabbed when about 20 Islamists chanting and some carrying knives attacked the demonstrators on Saturday, the Milliyet and Hurriyet newspapers reported.

About 200 people staged the kissing protest after officials in the Ankara municipality, which is run by Turkey’s ruling Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP), admonished a young couple for kissing in the street.

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U.S. shift poses risk to Pakistan

Declan Walsh writes: From multibillion-dollar military aid to stealthy and secretive drone strikes, Pakistan, perhaps even more than Afghanistan, has been the central focus of America’s 12-year war on Islamist militancy.

Now, as President Obama’s landmark policy speech on Thursday made clear, all of that is changing. Drone strikes are dwindling, the war in Afghanistan is drawing to a close and the battle against Al Qaeda is receding.

Pakistani leaders who have long demanded an American exit from their region may get their wish, but a broader disengagement is also likely to diminish the financing, prestige and political importance Pakistan held as a crucial player in global counterterrorism efforts, and could upset its internal stability.

The diminution of the drone campaign may ease a major point of friction between Pakistan and the West, but the tribal belt in northwestern Pakistan, where about 360 drone strikes have landed in the past decade, remains a hotbed of Islamist militancy, largely outside government control. Although many senior leaders of Al Qaeda sheltering there have been felled by C.I.A. missiles, they have been largely replaced by committed Pakistani jihadists with ties that span the border with Afghanistan.

With American combat troops leaving Afghanistan in 2014, and the drone campaign already winding down in Pakistan, analysts fear that unless the Pakistani Army can assert itself conclusively, the tribal region could be plunged into deeper chaos. [Continue reading…]

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Syria opposition seeks to unify as momentum for talks builds

Reuters reports: Syria’s fractious opposition scrambled to agree a new leadership on Friday in a bid to present a coherent front at peace talks which the United States and Russia are convening to seek an end to more than two years of civil war.

A major assault by President Bashar al-Assad’s forces on a rebel held town over the past week is shaping into a pivotal battle. It has drawn in fighters from Assad’s Lebanese allies Hezbollah, justifying fears that a war that has killed 80,000 people would cross borders at the heart of the Middle East.

Washington and Moscow have been compelled to revive diplomacy by developments in recent months, which include new reports of atrocities, accusations chemical weapons were used and the rise of al Qaeda-linked fighters among rebels.

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Israel is moving deeper into Syria’s turmoil

The New York Times reports: For more than two years, Israeli leaders have insisted they had no intention of intervening in the civil war raging in neighboring Syria, but they vowed to stop sophisticated weapons from being transferred to Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia group, and to respond to intentional fire into their territory.

Now, having followed through with a pair of airstrikes on weapons shipments this month and, on Tuesday, the destruction of a Syrian Army position, Israelis are asking what their options are, as if they feel it has become impossible to avoid deeper involvement.

Already, the language has grown more heated on both sides, with Syrian officials declaring they are prepared for a major confrontation with Israel — and Israel’s military chief warning of dire consequences.

“Clearly, a policy that functions successfully for more than two years for Israel, that policy is not working because Syria, Iran, Hezbollah and Russia have all upped the ante,” said Itamar Rabinovich, Israel’s former chief negotiator with Syria, mentioning that Russia continues to send advanced weaponry despite American and Israeli protests. “They created new rules of the game that Israel needs to figure out. It’s a policy in formation; the answers are not definitive.”

Several senior government officials, as well as half a dozen experts on Syria and the Israeli military, said on Wednesday that there was no new policy in Jerusalem, but there was a growing awareness that continuation of the current policy was likely to yield different results.

The next time Israel strikes a weapons convoy, they say, President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is much more likely to retaliate, given the recent statements from Damascus. That could lead to further Israeli reaction, and a spiraling escalation. [Continue reading…]

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Iraqi society fragments while the politicians squabble

Hadeel Al Sayegh writes: Last month for the first time, I saw the aftermath of a bombing in Iraq, at the entrance to Baghdad Airport.The explosion had occurred a few moments before our plane landed from Abu Dhabi.

Several cars had parked at Abbas Bin Firnas, the final checkpoint before the airport, where people say farewell to their loved ones. By the time our car passed the scene, it was evacuated and all that was left was the burnt black frames of the vehicles. Scores of people died.

My father, who panicked when he saw the news on TV, was relieved to see me at his construction site in Baghdad with all my limbs attached.

He was talking to several engineers, one of whom told him that security officials found a bomb at the entrance of a nearby mosque while he was performing his prayers. They were lucky to have defused it just in time. The consensus was that an attempt to re-ignite sectarian divisions was imminent.

Little did we know that Iraq would unravel so quickly. Violence has always occurred on the outskirts of the capital and in more remote areas in the country. But today, almost three weeks later, even Baghdad is not immune.

In the past, attacks would target public areas such as markets, restaurants and cafes but now the perpetrators are focusing on places of worship – Sunni and Shia mosques.

Eighty-six people died on Monday; it was the bloodiest and deadliest day of the year. [Continue reading…]

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Iran presidential campaign begins without two big names

The Washington Post reports: Iran’s conservatives, who on Tuesday saw the two main moderate threats to their dominance barred from running in next month’s presidential election, face a new challenge: persuading shocked and skeptical Iranians to turn out to vote.

With the field of hopefuls clear, the mostly conservative nominees whose candidacies were approved by Iran’s Guardian Council officially launched their campaigns Wednesday, apparently free from the challenges of the most talked-about candidates, two-time former president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and the top aide to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ­Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei.

Of the eight approved candidates, Iran’s lead nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, who is a close adviser to the country’s supreme leader, appears to have mounting support among conservative politicians. But he cannot credibly claim popular backing, never having won an election, and his platform of “resistance” is unlikely to win votes from a populace eager for relief from the international economic sanctions imposed on Iran because of its nuclear activities.

Many Iranians seemed more interested in the fates of the two big names who were rejected than in those who were cleared to run, and it remained uncertain Wednesday how Iran’s leaders intend to try to revive the interest sparked by the surprise candidacies of Rafsanjani and Mashaei.

“I swear that every passenger who sat in this car in the past week said they would only vote for the old lion, Rafsanjani,” said a Tehran taxi driver who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of government reprisal. “I don’t think any of them will vote now.” [Continue reading…]

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Hezbollah aids Syrian military in a key battle

The New York Times reports: Syrian government forces backed by Lebanese fighters from the militant group Hezbollah pushed Sunday into parts of Qusayr, a strategic city long held by rebels, according to an antigovernment activist and pro-government news channels. If the advance holds, it would be a serious setback for opponents of President Bashar al-Assad.

Both sides called it one of the war’s most intense ground battles. The fight seemed likely to inflame regional tensions as Hezbollah plunges more deeply into the conflict in Syria, increasing fears of a regional conflagration.

The Syrian military hammered Qusayr, on the Lebanon border, with airstrikes and artillery, killing at least 52 people and wounding hundreds as civilians cowered, unable to flee the city, activists said. By day’s end about 60 percent of the city, including the municipal office building, was under the army’s control for the first time in months, one activist said. Residents said rebels kept fighting into the night in Qusayr, killing a number of Hezbollah and government fighters.

Syrian state television said the army had “tightened the noose on the terrorists,” the government’s term for its armed opponents, by attacking from several directions. State news media said the army had “restored security and stability” to most of the city, killing many rebel fighters and capturing others.

The battle for the city, in heavily contested Homs Province, is viewed by both loyalists and government opponents as a turning point that could, in the words of one activist in Qusayr, “decide the fate of the regime and the revolution.” [Continue reading…]

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Syria, Israel exchange fire on Golan Heights

Reuters reports: Syria said its troops destroyed an Israeli vehicle that crossed into its territory from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Tuesday and warned that any attempt to violate its sovereignty would meet “immediate and firm retaliation”.

Israel said the incident took place on its side of the Golan ceasefire line, that the vehicle was damaged but not destroyed, none of its soldiers were hurt and they returned fire.

The clash highlighted the potential for renewed conflict along a frontline that has become increasingly fraught after nearly four decades of calm overseen by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his father.

It also followed Israeli airstrikes near Damascus against suspected missile stockpiles two weeks ago, after which Syria threatened to retaliate.

Assad is battling a two-year-old uprising in which rebel forces, including radical Islamists, have taken swathes of rural territory and attacked army posts near the Golan frontier.

There are frequent reports of cross-border gunfire from Syria during clashes between army and rebel forces but Tuesday’s incident was the first time since the start of the crisis that Syria’s armed forces said they targeted Israel’s military.

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Why China’s riches won’t bring it freedom

Pankaj Mishra writes: Modern history is the story of how liberal democracy, originating in the U.K. and America, spread around the world. This may sound like an absurd fantasy. In actuality, this Whiggish narrative of progress underpins most newspaper editorials, political commentary and speeches in the West, and frames larger views of political developments in the non-West.

It accounts for the gloomy undertone to Freedom House’s latest report, which records the shrinking of liberal democracy worldwide. Even countries with regular elections, such as India, are far from upholding the notion of liberalism, which advocates the maximizing of individual rights for the fullest realization of human potential.

Perhaps we should discard the ideological prejudice that assumes the universalization of liberal democracy. We might then be able to see dispassionately the true multiplicity of political forms, how they came into being and what they portend.

The specific socioeconomic conditions that enabled both liberalism and democracy, such as the Reformation’s stress on individual responsibility or industrial capitalism, were particular to Western Europe and America.

They couldn’t be recreated elsewhere easily, especially among countries trying to catch up to the West. Japan, the first non-Western country to try to become modern, became an economic and military power without enshrining liberal concerns for individual rights.

Before Japan, there was Germany, another society that embarked on industrialization relatively late compared with the rest of Western Europe, and was modernized by a strong centralized state.

Neither Germany nor Japan embraced the traditions of Anglo-American liberalism, which encouraged individualism, laissez-faire economics and a fundamental distrust of state power. Individual rights were subordinated to the economic and military imperatives of countries lurching late into the modern world. [Continue reading…]

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Decline of the empire

In State of the Union: Nation Essays 1958-2005, Gore Vidal writes: On September 16, 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died. The empire was seventy-one years old and had been in ill health since 1968. Like most modern empires, ours rested not so much on military prowess as on economic power.

After the French Revolution, the world money power shifted from Paris to London. For three generations, the British maintained an old-fashioned colonial empire, as well as a modern empire based on London’s primacy in the money markets. Then, in 1914, New York replaced London as the world’s financial capital. Before 1914, the United States had been a developing country, dependent on outside investment. But with the shift of the money power from Old World to New, what had been a debtor nation became a creditor nation and central motor to the world’s economy. All in all, the English were well pleased to have us take their place. They were too few in number for so big a task. As early as the turn of the century, they were eager for us not only to help them out financially but to continue, in their behalf, the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon race: to bear with courage the white man’s burden, as Rudyard Kipling not so tactfully put it. Were we not—English and Americans—all Anglo-Saxons, united by common blood, laws, language? Well, not, we were not. But our differences were not so apparent then. In any case, we took on the job. We would supervise and civilize the lesser breeds. We would make money.

By the end of World War II, we were the most powerful and least damaged of the great nations. We also had most of the money. America’s hegemony lasted exactly five years. Then the cold and hot wars began. Our masters would have us believe that all our problems are the fault of the Evil Empire of the East, with its Satanic and atheistic religion, ever ready to destroy us in the night. This nonsense began at a time when we had atomic weapons and the Russians did not. They had lost 20 million of their people in the war, and 8 million of them before the war, thanks to their neoconservative Mongolian political system. Most important, there was never any chance, then or now, of the money power (all that matters) shifting from New York to Moscow. What was—and is—the reason for the big scare? Well, World War II made prosperous the United States, which had been undergoing a depression for a dozen years; and made very rich those magnates and their managers who govern the republic, with many a wink, in the people’s name. In order to maintain a general prosperity (and enormous wealth for the few) they decided that we would become the world’s policeman, perennial shield against the Mongol hordes. We shall have an arms race, said one of the high priests, John Foster Dulles, and we shall win it because the Russians will go broke first. We were then put on a permanent wartime economy, which is why a third or so of the government’s revenues is constantly being siphoned off to pay for what is euphemistically called defense. [Continue reading…]

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Fears grow of clash between Israel and Syria

The Los Angeles Times reports: Fears about a possible escalation of violence between Israel and Syria grew Sunday amid renewed Israeli threats to destroy Syrian weapons caches and Syria’s warnings of retaliation.

After decades of relative calm along the two nations’ borders, some Israeli officials say tensions with Syria have reached one of the highest points since the 1973 Yom Kippur war.

During a Cabinet meeting Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would continue to act to prevent Syria’s advanced weapons from falling into the hands of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah or other organizations deemed to be terrorists.

“The Middle East is in one of its most sensitive periods in decades with the escalating upheaval in Syria,’’ Netanyahu said. “We are monitoring the changes there closely and are prepared for any scenario.” [Continue reading…]

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Jihadists’ control of Syrian oilfields signals a decisive moment in conflict

Julian Borger writes: The stranglehold that Jabhat al-Nusra and its allies have achieved over Syria’s oilfields signals a decisive moment in the conflict that will shape the rapidly and violently evolving map of the new Middle East.

The impact is immediately visible. With a new independent source of funding, the jihadists holding the oilfields between al-Raqqa and Deir Ezzor are much better equipped than their Sunni rivals, reinforcing the advantage originally provided by Qatari backing. They have been able to provide bread and other essentials to the people in the areas under their control, securing an enduring popular base.

This serves to marginalise the western-backed rebels, the National Coalition and the Supreme Military Council (SMC), even further. The blustering claim by the SMC commander, Salim Idriss, that he was going to muster a 30,000 force to retake the oilfields served only to undermine his credibility.

More importantly, as so often in history, control over hydrocarbons has solidified new lines on the map. The fact that the Syrian army has withdrawn from the heart of the country and that the victorious Salafist groups have not pressed their attack, but instead entered into a revenue-sharing agreement with Damascus over the oil, show that both sides are satisfied with the dividing lines. [Continue reading…]

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Hezbollah steps up Syria battle, Israel threatens more strikes

Reuters reports: Lebanese Hezbollah militants attacked a Syrian rebel-held town alongside Syrian troops on Sunday and Israel threatened more attacks on Syria to rein the militia in, highlighting the risks of a wider regional conflict if planned peace talks fail.

Activists said it was the fiercest fighting in Syria’s two year-old civil war involving Hezbollah, a Shi’ite group backed by Iran which they said appeared to be helping President Bashar al-Assad secure a vital corridor in case Syria fragments.

Speaking from Qusair near the border with Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, activist Hadi Abdallah said Syrian warplanes bombed the town in the morning and shells were hitting the town at a rate of up to 50 a minute. At least 32 people were killed.

“The army is hitting Qusair with tanks and artillery from the north and east while Hezbollah is firing mortar rounds and multiple rocket launchers from the south and west,” he said.

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