Syrian forces have mixed chemical weapons
and loaded them into bombs in preparation for possible use on President Bashar
Assad's own people, Fox News confirms.
A senior U.S. official told Fox News that
bombs were loaded with components of sarin gas, a deadly nerve gas. Syrian
forces have 60 days to use these bombs until the chemical mixture expires and
has to be destroyed.
NBC News , which first reported this latest
escalation in the Syrian civil war, cited sources saying bombs filled with a
sarin component have not yet been loaded onto planes, but the Syrian military
is prepared to use these chemical weapons against civilians pending orders from
Assad.
The sarin could be delivered in several
ways but is believed to have been placed in fracturable canisters that can be
dropped from planes, according to a senior US military source.
"We think they have it in aerosol
form," the source told Fox News.
The United States has said chemical weapons
use would be unacceptable and would trigger greater Western intervention in the
conflict.
The US military is making contingency plans
should Assad leave suddenly. Various Middle Eastern countries are trying to
find a place to give Assad asylum, according to Middle Eastern diplomatic
sources.
In Brussels earlier Wednesday, U.S.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reiterated concerns that "an
increasingly desperate Assad regime might turn to chemical weapons" or
lose control of them to militant groups.
She also said NATO's decision on Tuesday to
send Patriot missiles to Turkey's southern border with Syria sends a message
that Ankara is backed by its allies. The missiles are intended only for
defensive purposes, she said.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu
was quoted Wednesday in the Turkish newspaper Sabah as saying that Syria has
about 700 missiles, some of them long-range.
Gunmen loyal to opposite sides in Syria's
civil war battled Wednesday in the streets of the Lebanese city of Tripoli. The
fighting has killed six people and wounded nearly 60 since Monday, security
officials said.
The bloodshed is a sign of just how
vulnerable Lebanon is to getting sucked into the Syrian crisis. The countries
share a porous border and a complex web of political and sectarian ties that is
easily enflamed.
The Lebanese men killed in Syria were Sunni
Muslims, like the majority of rebels trying to overthrow Assad's regime. Assad
and much of his inner circle belong to the Alawite sect, which is an offshoot
of Shiite Islam.
The fighting in Lebanon comes at a time of
deep uncertainty in Syria, with rebels battling government troops near Assad's
seat of power in Damascus.
Syria has been careful not to confirm it
has chemical weapons, while insisting it would never use such weapons against
its own people.
But as the regime wobbles, there are fears
the crisis will keep spiraling outside its borders. Fighting has spilled over
into Turkey, Jordan and Israel since the uprising began more than 20 months
ago, but Lebanon is particularly susceptible.
Seventeen times bigger than Lebanon and
four times more populous, Syria has long had powerful allies there, including
the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. For much of the past 30 years,
Lebanese have lived under Syrian military and political domination.
Meanwhile, the unrest inside Syria shows no
sign of slowing down.
The uprising began with peaceful protests
in March 2011 and later escalated into a civil war that the opposition says has
killed more than 40,000 people.
Besides the violence roiling the capital,
Damascus, there was growing speculation about the fate of a top Syrian
spokesman who has become a prominent face of the regime.
Lebanese security officials have said
Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi flew Monday from Beirut to London.
But it was not clear whether Makdissi had defected, quit his post or been
forced out. Syria has had no official comment on Makdissi, who has defended the
regime's crackdown on dissent.
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