REPORT: Activists: Israeli strike kills 42 Syrian soldiers

       
Israel's weekend airstrike on a military complex near the Syrian capital of Damascus killed at least 42 Syrian soldiers, a group of anti-regime activists said Monday, citing information from military hospitals.             
The Syrian government has not released a death toll, but Syrian state media have reported casualties in Sunday's predawn airstrike, Israel's third into Syria so far this year.     

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said about 150 soldiers are normally stationed in the area that was targeted, but that it was not clear how many were there at the time of the strike.

Positions:

Former war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte  told Swiss TV that a U.N. commission has indications Syrian rebel forces used nerve agent sarin as a weapon.                    

Del Ponte, a former Swiss attorney general who headed two U.N. criminal tribunals, told Italian-language Swiss public broadcaster SRI that the indications are based on interviews with victims, doctors and field hospitals in neighboring countries.                                 

Del Ponte is a member of the U.N.'s four-member independent human rights panel probing alleged war crimes and other abuses in Syria.                                

She said in the interview broadcast Sunday night the panel's investigators have "strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas, from the way the victims were treated" but no evidence government forces also used sarin as a chemical weapon.                

On another note, a US intelligence official said that the United States was not informed about the air strikes that took place in Syria against what western officials said are Iranian missiles bound for Hezbollah.      

However, US Secretary of State John Kerry will make another effort to see if Russia is committed to finding a political solution to end the Syrian civil war when he visits Moscow this week, a US official said.    

"We certainly want to try to make another stab at it, to make another effort at it, because events on the ground have become steadily worse," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, adding that Kerry would meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday.    

The official also told reporters that Washington had no information to suggest Syrian rebels had the capability or intention to use sarin after a UN official said human rights investigators have gathered testimony indicating rebel forces have used the nerve agent.

This as French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said during a two-day trip to Hong Kong that the prospect of Israeli action in Syria is understandable but presents a "risk".
                                          
"If the conflict extends itself to the surrounding countries, the nature of the conflict can be changed," Fabius said.                            

As for Iran, it denied that Israeli strikes targeted warehouses contain Iranian weapons.                      

In this regard, Brigadier General Masoud Jazayeri, condemned the propaganda made by western and Israeli media assuring that the Israeli operation hit Iranian warehouses in Syria.                

In turn, Russia said it was concerned the chances of foreign military intervention in Syria were growing following reports of Israeli airstrikes around Damascus which were a source of "particular alarm".           

"We are seriously concerned by the signs of preparation of global public opinion for possible armed intervention in the long-running internal conflict in Syria," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement.   


REUTERS/AP/LBCI


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