Sana / Reuters

Syria's President Bashar Assad (R) sits during an interview with journalists from Argentina in Damascus in this handout photograph distributed by Syria's national news agency SANA on Saturday.

LIMA - Proposed peace talks for Syria would not curb "terrorism" in the country and it is unrealistic to think they would succeed, Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview published in an Argentine newspaper on Saturday. 

Speaking in Syria with the newspaper Clarin, Assad said he was doubtful that mediation the United States and Russia have proposed could settle a deadly conflict that has convulsed the country for two years. 

"There is confusion in the world between a political solution and terrorism. They think a political conference will halt terrorists in the country. That is unrealistic," he said in reference to insurgent groups seeking to unseat him. 

Rebels demanding Assad's resignation have also voiced skepticism about the proposed peace talks. 

Assad reiterated he would not resign and said peace talks would not make sense because the opposition was too fragmented to negotiate an agreement. 

"No dialogue with terrorists," he said.

Videotaped excerpts of the interview were posted on Clarin's website. 

The Syrian conflict started with mainly peaceful demonstrations against Assad, but turned into a civil war in which the United Nations says tens of thousands of people have been killed. 

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Islamist militants have emerged as the most potent of the anti-Assad rebels. 

On Friday, the outlook for talks appeared to hit snags. 

The United States chided Russia for sending missiles to the Syrian government, while France made clear it would oppose any meeting if Assad's regional ally Iran were invited. 

Russia's position is that Tehran should be part of any solution. 

Related: 

• NYT: Entire families executed in ruthless Syrian massacre

• 'Sheer savagery': Syrian rebel rips out soldier's heart, Human Rights Watch says

• NYT: Russia sends advanced missiles to aid Assad in Syria

A Syrian rebel commander has been caught on video cutting out the heart of a soldier and biting into it, Human Rights Watch said late Monday.

Amateur video posted online shows a man cutting into the dead soldier's torso and removing his liver and heart.

The New York-based rights group identified the man as Abu Sakkar, a founder of the rebel Omar al-Farouq Brigade. 

In the video, which prompted outrage on all sides of the country’s deadly civil war, the man says: "I swear to God we will eat your hearts and your livers, you soldiers of Bashar the dog,”according to HRW.

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Sakkar also uses sectarian language to insult Alawites, HRW said. More than 80,000 are thought to have been killed in the increasingly sectarian conflict, in which majority Sunni Muslims have sought to overthrow Assad, whose family is chiefly supported by Alawites, who are an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Access to country is difficult because of government restrictions and security concerns, making it hard for observers and news organizations to independently verify the source and authenticity of Internet videos. 

HRW said it compared frames in the clip to similar videos of the same man and spoke to sources in Homs, including other rebels, who identified Sakkar.

“It is not known whether the Independent Omar al-Farouq Brigade operates within the command structure of the Free Syrian Army,” HRW said Monday. “But the opposition Syrian National Coalition and the Free Syrian Army leadership should take all possible steps to hold those responsible for war crimes accountable and prevent such abuses by anyone under their command.”

It repeated its call for the United Nations Security Council to refer Syria’s conflict to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to ensure accountability for all war crimes and crimes against humanity.

“Even by the standards of Syria's ever-worsening stream of atrocity and massacre videos, the latest footage from the country cannot fail to shock for its sheer savagery,” HRW emergencies director Peter Bouckaert wrote on the Foreign Policy news site.

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People resisting the army of President Bashar al-Assad in northern Syria cope with loss and prepare for fighting.

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“Abu Sakkar is just one man, and there are many other armed fighters in Syria who reject such sectarian actions and would be horrified by the mutilation and desecration of a corpse -- let alone an act of cannibalism. But he is a commander in a decisive battle in Syria -- hardly a marginal figure.”

Fahad Almasri, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army condemned the actions portrayed in the video.

"First, who did this behavior has not the FSA, does not represent us and does not represent the Syrian Revolution. We in the joint command of FSA categorically reject any actions or behaviors do not respect the values and ethics of Syrian Revolution and FSA, and we condemn in the strongest words of condemnation of such acts of individual that does not accept them never," Almasri said.

The United States and Russia this week proposed an international conference aimed at ending the war. A Syria government minister on Tuesday said it wanted more details before deciding whether it would agree to attend, Reuters reported.

Syrian Information Minister Omran Zoabi was quoted by state news agency SANA as saying that Syria welcomed the proposal but stressed it "will not be a party at all to any ... meeting which harms, directly or indirectly, national sovereignty." 

Related:

• Syria denies blame for Turkish border bomb blast that killed at least 46
• Turkey PM: Red line has been crossed 
• Full Syria coverage from NBC News

Ugarit News via AP file

In this image taken from video obtained from the Ugarit News, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, a man reads a statement as four abducted Filipino UN peacekeepers are seen in Daraa, Syria, on Thursday, May 9, 2013. The peacekeepers have now been released.

Four Filipino United Nations peacekeepers abducted last week by armed men while patrolling in the demilitarized area between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights have been released, officials said Sunday.

U.N. officials and the Philippine army both said that the four are in good health.

The rebels from the Yarmouk Martyrs' Brigade had said they were holding the soldiers for their own safety after clashes with Syrian government forces had put them in danger, Reuters reported.

They were seized on Tuesday as they patrolled close to an area where the same rebel group held 21 Filipino observers for three days in March.

A rebel spokesman said the four were handed over on Sunday morning at a border checkpoint called Beit Ara, in an area where the Jordanian and Israeli borders join with the Golan Heights.

"They have been handed over in a spot in the Yarmouk Valley," Abu Iyas al-Horani told Reuters.

Philippine Foreign Minister Albert del Rosario confirmed to Reuters in Manila that the four had been released.

Brigadier General Domingo Tutaan, a spokesman for the Philippine armed forces, said the four had already been taken back to their battalion in the U.N. peacekeeping force on the Golan Heights.

The Philippines said it aimed to pull out 342 soldiers on peacekeeping duties in Golan after the abduction.

Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East War and later annexed them, a move not recognized internationally.

Meanwhile, at least 82,000 people have been killed and 12,500 others are missing after two years of civil war in Syria, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday.

Most of the dead were killed by troops and militia loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and most of the missing are believed to have been detained by the government's secret police and other loyalists, the monitoring group said.

"The vast majority of civilian victims were killed by the regime. Killings in unofficial jails are commonplace, and the conditions under which prisoners are held are horrific," said Rami Abdulrahman, the Observatory's president.

The Observatory, established by Abdulrahman in Britain seven years ago, said 4,788 children were among the 34,473 civilians killed. Another 12,916 anti-Assad fighters were killed, along with 1,924 army deserters, it said.

On the loyalist side, 16,729 troops and 12,000 militiamen and informers have been killed. The report said the fate of around 2,500 loyalist troops believed to be held by rebels is unknown.

Reuters contributed to this report

Nine Turkish citizens were arrested Sunday in connection with the car bomb attacks that killed 46 people in a town near the Syrian border on Saturday.

The attacks, in the town of Reyhanli, were carried out by a group linked to Syria's intelligence service, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Besir Atalay, told reporters.

However, Syria rejected Turkey's allegations that it was behind the bombs.

"Syria did not and will never do such an act because our values do not allow this. It is not anyone's right to hurl unfounded accusations," Syrian Information Minister Omran Zubi was quoted as saying on state media.

The car bombs increased fears that Syria's civil war was dragging in neighboring states despite renewed diplomatic moves towards ending two years of fighting in which more than 70,000 people have been killed.

Reyhanli, in the southern Hatay province, is in an area known to be home to many refugees. There are more than 300,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey, most of them in camps along the volatile border

It has also become a logistics base for rebels fighting Syria’s president Bashar Assad.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said those involved were thought also to have staged an attack on the Syrian coastal town of Banias a week ago in which at least 62 people were killed, Reuters reported.

"The attack has nothing to do with the Syrian refugees in Turkey, it's got everything to do with the Syrian regime," Davutoglu said in an interview on TRT television, Reuters said.

"We should be careful against ethnic provocations in Turkey and Lebanon after the Banias massacre," he said. 

Related: Turkey PM: Red line has been crossed

This story was originally published on Sun May 12, 2013 9:10 AM EDT

Turkey's prime minister is charging that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against its people and has called on the U.S. to take stronger action, he told NBC News' Ann Curry in an exclusive interview Thursday.

"It is clear the regime has used chemical weapons and missiles," Turkish premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

Erdogan gave no specifics about when and where the weapons were allegedly used, but he said he believes President Obama's "red line" for the U.S. in deciding whether to take action has been crossed.

"It has been passed long time ago," said Erdogan, who is meeting with Obama on May 16.

"We want the United States to assume more responsibilities and take further steps. And what sort of steps they will take, we are going to talk about this."

Erdogan cited as evidence the "remainders of missiles" — at least 200 by his count — that he believes were used in chemical attacks, along with the injuries of Syrians brought over the Turkish border for medical treatment.

"There are patients who are brought to our hospitals who were wounded by these chemical weapons," he said.

Erdogan rejected any suggestion that the rebels might have used chemical weapons.

"There is no way I can believe in this now. First of all, how are they going to obtain this? And who will give this to them?" he said.

"But if it exists, we are against this...We are against whoever holds the weapons."

A member of the United Nations' commission on Syria claimed this week "strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof" that the rebels has used sarin gas, but the panel quickly backed away from those claims -- adding that it had "not reached conclusive findings as to the use of chemical weapons in Syria by any parties to the conflict."

The White House — which has said it has varying levels of confidence that sarin was used on a small scale in Syria — quickly threw cold water on the suggestion that the rebels were to blame.

Erdogan said he could not confirm that sarin was used in Syria. "We don't have such a finding yet," he said.

Asked whether Turkey would support a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone in Syria, Erdogan said, "Right from the beginning...we would say 'yes.'"

He denied that Turkey has provided military support to the rebels but said his country has spent nearly $1 billion on aid to 300,000 refugees from Syria.

"We keep the open door policy because they are fleeing oppression." Erdogan said.

Erdogan said he has heard reports that Assad's wife and children have already left Syria, their lives "ruined" by him.

"The thing he should do now is to leave Syria," he said. "Sooner or later, the opposition are going to get him."

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story included a response from Erdogan to a two-part question about whether he would support a U.S.-enforced no-fly zone and American troops in Syria. The translator only asked Erdogan about the no-fly zone, however, and the story has been changed to reflect that.

Mladen Antonov / AFP - Getty Images

Secretary of State John Kerry arrives at Moscow's Vnukovo Airport on Tuesday in his first trip to Russia since taking office. The civil war in Syria will likely dominate his discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in Moscow on Tuesday to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin for discussions that will include what may be considered problem number one: what to do about the civil war in Syria.

Russia has traditionally been a backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad, while the U.S. has sided with the rebel forces trying to overthrow him, so the issue is certain to be prominent.

A senior State Department official on Monday conveyed a sense of urgency in gaining Russia’s cooperation on Syria, noting that despite Moscow’s formal commitment to a Geneva agreement calling for a political transition in the country, it has done little to work toward that goal.

“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,” the official said. “The casualty figures are mounting, the rate of killing has gone up, and ... the situation is adding to instability in the region.”

In a briefing Monday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said the administration was "working with the Russians" and was hopeful that Putin would continue a pattern of backing away from support of Assad.

In February, Russian and U.S. foreign ministers met with opposition coalition leader Mouaz Alkhatib in Munich. Later that month, however, the Syrian National Coalition turned down invitations to meet with diplomats in Washington and Moscow, citing Russia’s support of Assad.

Two months earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he had urged a Syrian counterpart to meet with opposition leaders so they could discuss a way to end the brutal civil war, which has killed more than 70,000 people in two years, according to United Nations figures.

And in December, Putin said in a nationally broadcast news conference that “we are not concerned about the fate of Assad’s regime,” seemingly turning his back on a traditional ally.

Still, Russia has repeatedly come under fire from the United States for blocking U.N. Security Council resolutions drawn up to put more pressure on Assad.

“We have been clear in the past about our disappointment with Russia over their opposition to resolutions at the Security Council with regards to this matter, but this is an ongoing conversation,” Carney said Monday.

Washington’s hope lies not only in meetings with Russian leaders but in the increasing international outrage over what is perceived to be Assad’s cruel treatment of Syrians, Carney said.

“We have seen over the course of weeks and months an escalation by Assad of the brutality that is perpetuating on his own people, and we have consistently in our conversations with the Russians and others pointed clearly to Assad’s behavior as proof that further support for that regime is not in the interest of the Syrian people or in the interest of the countries that have in the past supported Assad. “We make that case repeatedly with the Russian government and others, and I’m sure we will continue to do that.”

Related:

• Analysis: Putin's crackdown guts opposition movement
• US official: Syrian rebels not using chemical weapons
• Full Syria coverage from NBC News

News Analysis

TEL AVIV, Israel –  Syrian rebels have cheered Israel’s strikes against Syrian government facilities, while the Syrian government has said the attacks prove Israel is backing the rebels.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Israel is not engaging in the Syrian civil war. Instead, it is striking early blows in Israel’s possible next war: against Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

“This attack had nothing to do with the Syrian civil war. The big story is Iran and Hezbollah, not Syria,” Professor Eyal Zisser, a Syrian expert at Tel Aviv University, told NBC News Monday.

“Israel’s message is that we want to change the rules of the game. For the last 20 years Iran provided all kinds of weapons to Hezbollah through Syria. Now this is the end of the story. Israel will no longer accept the rearming of Hezbollah,” Zisser added.

Analysts here say there are four weapons systems on Israel’s blacklist, whose transfer through Syria would trigger air attacks: guided ground to ground rockets like the Iranian Fateh 110’s reportedly destroyed in this weekend’s attack; chemical weapons; land to sea missiles like Russian Yakhont missiles that can hit a ship 200 miles at sea at speeds of up to Mach 2; and anti-aircraft rockets like the SAM 17s that would endanger Israel’s control of the skies.

Israeli analysts have taken to calling these weapons “game-changers,” whose transfer must be stopped at any price. But others point out that fearsome as they are, Israel has answers to all of them and is in no real danger of losing its superiority against a relatively small outfit like Hezbollah.

Where is Syria’s ‘red line’?
So the public debate in Israel, which the military has kept out of, revolves around this question: Where is Syria’s so –called “red line”? At what point will Israel’s attacks against targets inside Syria provoke the Syrian leadership into retaliating against Israel? Is Israel walking a tightrope that will lead inevitably to a sudden clash with Syria?

Israel takes comfort in its intelligence assessment that President Bashar al-Assad would rather absorb the blows and the humiliation than confront Israel. The assumption is that Assad knows any confrontation would lead to a brutal Israeli attack, probably against his air force and air fields, and that would lead to his defeat at the hands of the Syrian rebels.

But Israel is also in a quandary about its best interests: What is better for Israel: Syria under the Iranian-backed leadership of Assad? Syria under a rebel-Sunni-Islamist coalition? Or, most likely, the breakup of Syria into ethnic and religious cantons?

With no clear answer, Israel is electing to stay well out of it.

Its actions against Hezbollah on Syrian soil could backfire if Syria chooses to retaliate. So far, there is no real sign of that – although reports from Syria this weekend suggest that Syrian missiles are now trained on Israel.

But while maintaining a heightened state of alert, and positioning two Iron Dome anti-missile systems in the northern towns of Haifa and Safed, Israel is also downplaying any threat, its citizens are paying little attention, and an order to civilian aircraft to stay out of the northern skies is expected to be lifted today.

Related links

US official: Syrian rebels lack 'ability or intent' to use chemical weapons

Israel to Syria's Assad: Airstrikes not aimed at helping rebels

Analysis: Israel may be ready for more active military role in Syria

A senior State Department official said Monday there is no indication that rebels fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad have “the ability or the intent” to use chemical weapons.

A member of the U.N. human rights commission, speaking to Swiss and Italian television a day earlier, had spoken of “concrete suspicions” that the rebels had used chemical weapons.

But the commissioner, Carla del Ponte, said that there was “not yet incontrovertible proof.” And the commission itself released a statement Monday to say that it had not reached a conclusion about the use of chemical weapons by either side in the two-year conflict, which has left an estimated 70,000 people dead.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has said the United States believes “with some degree of varying confidence” that Syria has used chemical weapons against its people, but President Barack Obama has said it is not clear who used the weapons and how.

An activist group opposed to the Syrian regime said Monday that an Israeli airstrike on Syrian military targets over the weekend killed at least 42 Syrian soldiers. The dead reportedly included elite troops stationed near the presidential palace.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group based in Britain, said its figure was based on sources at Syrian hospitals, The Associated Press reported. The New York Times quoted a high-ranking Syrian military official as saying dozens of elite troops had been killed.

Israeli jets bombed a military research facility north of Damascus, the capital, before dawn Sunday, a U.S. official told NBC News. Video shot by activists showed a fireball rising into the sky.

It was the second apparent Israeli strike in Syria in recent days. The first came Friday, U.S. officials said, when Israeli warplanes targeted a shipment of weapons headed for Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia that supports the Syrian government.

On Monday, Israel sought to persuade Assad that the strikes were not meant to weaken him.

“There are no winds of war,” said Yair Golan, the general commanding Israeli forces on the Syrian and Lebanese fronts, Reuters reported, quoting an Israeli news website. “Do you see tension? There is no tension. Do I look tense to you?”

Syria has accused Israel of trying to support the anti-Assad rebels, but analysts have said Israel is more likely trying to keep the Syrian government from sending weapons to Hezbollah, an avowed enemy of Israel.

Anti-regime activists also said Monday that Syrian rebels shot down a government helicopter in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, killing eight troops on board, the AP reported.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground for its reporting, posted a video showing several armed men standing in front of wreckage that one of the fighters says is a helicopter shot down late Sunday along Syria's border with Iraq.

As the man speaks, the camera shifts to a pickup truck piled with bodies. The fighter is then heard saying that all of Assad's troops who were aboard the helicopter were killed in the downing. He says Islamic fighters of the Abu Bakr Saddiq brigade brought down the helicopter as it was taking off from a nearby air base.

This story was originally published on Mon May 6, 2013 11:57 AM EDT

JERUSALEM - Israel sought to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday that its recent airstrikes around Damascus did not aim to weaken him in the face of a more than two-year-old rebellion.

Officials say Israel is reluctant to take sides in Syria's civil war for fear its actions would boost Islamists who are even more hostile to Israel than the Assad family, which has maintained a stable standoff with the Jewish state for decades.

But Israel has repeatedly warned it will not let Assad's ally Hezbollah receive hi-tech weaponry. Intelligence sources said Israel attacked Iranian-supplied missiles stored near the Syrian capital on Friday and Sunday that were awaiting transfer to Hezbollah guerrilla group in neighboring Lebanon.

Syria accused Israel of belligerence meant to shore up the outgunned anti-Assad rebels - drawing a denial on Monday from veteran Israeli lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Interviewed on Israel Radio, Hanegbi said the Netanyahu government aimed to avoid "an increase in tension with Syria by making clear that if there is activity, it is only against Hezbollah, not against the Syrian regime."

Hanegbi noted Israel had not formally acknowledged carrying out the raids in an effort to allow Assad to save face, adding that Netanyahu began a scheduled visit to China on Sunday to signal the sense of business as usual.

The Assad government has condemned the airstrikes as tantamount to a "declaration of war" and threatened unspecified retaliation.

But Hanegbi said Israel was ready for any development if the Syrians misinterpreted its messages and was ready "to respond harshly if indeed there is aggression against us".

As a precaution, Israel deployed two of its five Iron Dome rocket interceptors near the Syrian and Lebanese fronts and grounded civilian aircraft in the area, although an Israeli military spokesman said the airspace would reopen on Monday.

Military analysts say Syria would be no match for Israel in any confrontation. But Damascus, with its leverage over Hezbollah, could still consider proxy attacks through Lebanon, where Israel's conventional forces fought an inconclusive war against the Iranian-backed guerrillas in 2006.

Related:

• Israel strikes Syrian military research center, US official says
• Analysis: Israel may be ready for more active military role in Syria
• Full Syria coverage from NBC News

This story was originally published on Mon May 6, 2013 4:22 AM EDT

Israeli jets bombed a military research facility north of Damascus early Sunday, a senior official told NBC News. It marked the second Israeli attack on targets in Syria in recent days. 

Heavy explosions shook the city, and video shot by activists showed a fireball rising into the sky after Sunday's strikes.

Reuters reported that a Western intelligence source said the operation hit Iranian-supplied missiles that were en route to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.

A rebel spokesman, who spoke from a “liberated area” held by the opposition in Damascus, told NBC News there were huge explosions just before 2 a.m. Sunday local time (7 p.m. Saturday ET) in the Qaysoun mountains on the edge of Damascus. 

“Around 10 locations were hit," the spokesman said. "It was difficult to tell what was hit in the raid and what exploded afterwards.  Some of the targets were weapons and weapons depots.

"Secondary explosions continued for about four hours.  They shook all of Damascus. There was still smoke in the air as the sun came up.”

From its Damascus media office, the Free Syrian Army listed nine apparent targets, including the Syrian Revolutionary Guard, the 104th brigade headquarters, a weapons depot in Qasyoun and a military research center at Jamraya.

The FSA said power was cut in parts of Damascus at 1:48 am local time Sunday (6:48 p.m. Saturday ET). A FSA spokesman said the fires and explosions "made Damascus look like the day at night."

The White House said there would be no official comment on the latest attack, but diplomatic sources and U.S. officials told NBC News that the administration is fully supportive of the airstrikes.

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United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he spoke with the head of the Arab League, Nabil ElAraby, about the Israeli air strikes on Sunday and expressed "grave concern" for the risks to regional security. 

On Friday, Israeli warplanes launched strikes against targets inside Syria, U.S. officials told NBC News. It’s believed the primary target also was a shipment of weapons headed for Hezbollah, they said. A senior U.S. official said the airstrikes were believed to be related to delivery systems for chemical weapons.

After that attack, an Israeli spokesman in Washington said that Israel would not comment specifically on the reports but said that “Israel is determined to prevent the transfer of chemical weapons or other game-changing weaponry by the Syrian regime to terrorists, especially to Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

It wasn’t clear whether the Israelis alerted the U.S. before the attack. White House officials referred all questions to the Israelis.

Rebel units were in disagreement about what type of weapons were in the convoy, Reuters reported. A rebel from an information-gathering unit in Damascus that calls itself "The Syrian Islamic Masts Intelligence" said the convoy carried anti-aircraft missiles.

The rebel, who asked not to be named, added: "There were three strikes by Israeli F-16 jets that damaged a convoy carrying anti-aircraft missiles heading to the Shi'ite Lebanese party (Hezbollah) along the Damascus-Beirut military road. One strike hit a site near the (Syrian) Fourth Armoured Division in al-Saboura but we have been unable to determine what is in that location."

However, Qassim Saadedine, a commander and spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army, told Reuters he did not think the weapons were anti-aircraft. "We have nothing confirmed yet but we are assuming that it is some type of long-range missile that would be capable of carrying chemical materials," he said. 

In the January attack, Israeli fighter jets struck a convoy of sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles believed on their way to Hezbollah.  

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon publicly acknowledged the January airstrike inside Syria in a joint press conference with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in Tel Aviv on April 22. Ya’alon said any Syrian delivery of sophisticated weapons to rogue elements like Hezbollah would be a “red line” for Israel and “when they crossed this red line, we operated. We acted.”

MSNBC - TV

Syria is in the middle of a civil war pitting rebels against the regime of President Bashir Assad. Tens of thousands have already died, and the possible use of the nation’s stockpile of chemical weapons has been of grave concern to the U.S. and other nations.

Last week, the White House said there was evidence that Syria’s government may have used chemical weapons against its own people. But President Barack Obama has cautioned against rushing to action against Assad’s government, saying that the U.S. required more evidence before getting involved in the civil war there.  

The U.S. has long believed that Syria was stockpiling chemical weapons. Intelligence reports indicate that it has sarin and the nerve agent tabun along with traditional chemicals like mustard gas and hydrogen cyanide. A 2011 CIA report said Syria was also developing the potent nerve agent VX, which could render a city uninhabitable for days.

Syria has said that it hasn’t used and will not use chemical weapons.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah’s leader warned the rebels that his militia was ready to intervene on Assad’s side in Syria’s civil war. There have been concerns that Syrian SCUD missiles that might be capable of carrying chemical weapons could be transferred to Hezbollah.

NBC News' Richard Engel, Kristen Welker and Stacey Klein and Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

• Israel to Syria's Assad: Airstrikes not aimed at helping rebels
• Syrian government used chemical weapons 4 times, rebels say

This story was originally published on Sun May 5, 2013 10:33 AM EDT

NEWS ANALYSIS

ANTAKYA, Turkey -- War makes strange bedfellows. President Bashar Assad’s regime is in the unique position of being targeted both by Israel and supporters of al Qaeda.

It is hard to imagine more a diverse couple: Sworn enemies fighting against the same government.

Israel carried out a series of attacks on military targets in Damascus early Sunday, close to President Assad’s main compound, US officials told NBC News. A rebel spokesman said about 10 locations had been hit, adding: “They shook all of Damascus. There was still smoke in the air as the sun came up.”

Witnesses said they heard low-flying jets in the air, but only after the explosions began.  Witnesses also claim to have heard jets in Lebanon shortly before the raid.  Israel has not confirmed it carried out any attack.

Syrian state TV blamed Israel, and said it was helping the rebels it calls terrorists.

An Israeli source said Sunday’s targets included Iranian-made missiles bound for Hezbollah.

The rebel spokesman in Damascus said the rebels’ “spirits were lifted” by the pre-dawn raid, and that they resumed “intense attacks” on the regime in the capital on Sunday morning.

While there is no evidence that Israel is coordinating with the Syrian opposition, both are worried about what could happen as the civil war spins further out of control.

Israel specifically does not want Syria to hand over weapons, chemical or conventional, to Hezbollah.

Both Hezbollah – which is based in Lebanon, just north of Israel - and Iran are allies of Bashar Assad.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a bloody war in 2006.  But Israel doesn’t fully back the rebels either, especially not a powerful contingent of Islamic radicals. 

Israel does not want the Nusra front, which has pledged allegiance to al Qaeda, to obtain chemical weapons.  Neither does Washington.  Israel’s strategy thus far appears to be targeting threats as they come up and picking them off. 

If Israel sees weapons moving toward its border, it acts.  But many across the region are now wondering if this raid, larger in scale, is the start of a more active Israeli military role.  Has Israel decided that the longer the conflict drags on, the more risks there are regional stability?  Was this another surgical strike or the start of a new policy?  The answer may become clear in the coming days.

Related video: Syrian government used chemical weapons 4 times, rebels say