By Brian Whitaker
"There's now little doubt that the US is planning air strikes in Syria in response to last week's chemical attacks near Damascus – and that the strikes will go ahead with or without approval from the UN Security Council. The US will be supported in this politically, if not militarily, by a number of western and non-western countries.
According to journalist Mahir Zeynalov 33 countries
will be involved, with France, Britain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan playing
a leading role. This morning Turkey also declared its support.
In Britain, the Independent newspaper says the air strikes
will come "within
two weeks". The paper quotes Downing Street sources as insisting that
strikes will be specifically related to the issue of chemical weapons and not a
general intervention in the Syrian conflict.....
Separately, on the internet, there are attempts to work out
the firing position of rockets thought to be involved in the chemical
attacks.
Photographs of rockets embedded in the ground (see below) show
the direction of impact – and hence the direction from which they were fired.
The task is to determine the exact direction of fire from clues in the
photographs, such as buildings and shadows. There's more about this here
and here.
Further
analysis by blogger Brown Moses, using satellite photographs, appears to
confirm that at least one of the rockets, labelled 197, was fired from the
north, where the regime has a number of military positions. "
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