An Israeli Saar 5 warship off the coast of Lebanon has been hit by a small Hezbollah unmanned aircraft packed with explosives. Four Israelis are missing following the attack.
Previous reports have suggested that Iran has provided Hezbollah a number of Mheger 4 drones, along with training.
*UN sending team to Middle East to try and calm the situation.
*Israel has bombed smaller two military airports in Northern Lebanon. One is believed to be the Rayak base. [Globalsecurity list of Lebanese Airfields]
*Lebanon asking for ceasefire.
*Hezbollah firing rockets into Israel.
*Israel imposing blockade.
Israeli bombers have targeted Beirut International (aka Rafic Hariri International) airport as a continued response to the kidnapping of two of their soldiers.
Also reported are strikes against the Hezbollah TV station Al-Manar.
News Reports: news.com.au, CNN, Aljazeera
Globalsecurity.org Hezbollah profile
Beirut Rafic Hariri Internation Airport site
Wikipedia article on the airport
Al-Manar web site (Down at time of posting)
It looks like the militant Lebanese group Hezbollah has been watching how angered Israel has become over the kidnapping of a soldier by Hamas, and decided to take a couple of their own.
In response, Israel has now moved “planes, tanks and artillery” into Lebonese territory.
Update: Reports that seven Israeli soldiers have been killed in fighting against Hezbollah. This is getting serious quickly. They’re now fighting a way on two fronts, and have called up reserve troops.
News agencies are reporting that at least six bombs have been detonated in on commuter trains in Mumbai during evening peak hour. The bombing is likely to carry a large death toll due to the amount of passenger congestion on Indian trains. Very few details at this stage.
Latest information on the crash of S7-778. This site also includes passenger manifest [.xls].
A Sibir (Siberian Airlines) Airbus A-310 has crashed on landing in Irkutsk, killing an estimated 150 people and injuring around 55. The plane is believed to have veered off the runway and collided with a concrete barrier at speed.
My research suggests it was Siberian Airlines flight 778 with the tail number F-OGYP, but this is unconfirmed at this stage.
Photos and what I suspect is a passenger list can be found in this forum thread.
English discussion on Airdisaster.com
File photos of F-OGYP here and here.
Siberian Airlines Website (Server down at time of posting)
Defense Tech has all the information from the various angles, so suffice to say, I’ll just point to their article.
Interesting points:
- US early warning and intel seem to have had no problems detecting and tracking the launch.
- DPRK may have been bluffing about their delivery capabilities if the test was indeed a failure, or as a comment attached to the story alludes to, the Taepodong-2 may not have been fully fueled.
While the world waits around for North Korea to launch their Taepodong-2 missile (and if history’s anything to go by it will be over the head of the Japanese), the diplomatic rhetoric continues. The latest volley comes through a DPRK communist party newspaper:
“The army and people of the DPRK are now in full preparedness to answer a pre-emptive attack with a relentless annihilating strike and a nuclear war with a mighty nuclear deterrent”Â
Federation of American Scientists
Wikipedia North Korea Nuclear Weapons Program
Globalsecurity.org Taepodong 2 article