Did Mossad bomb North Korea?

 

 

RYONGCHON DISASTER IN 2004

Ryongchon is the town marked with a red circle. Yalu River marks the border between North Korea and China. Ryongchon is 20 km from the border. The seismic shock measured 3.6 on the Richter scale. 

Analysis 

The curious aspect of this case is the amount of “information” leaked about the supposed terrorist act by Mossad, reaching the ears of the alternative media and being reported there. It is rare that this kind of information is leaked to the public, especially in view of the fact that North Korea itself does not say that this was a terrorist act, but instead, says it was an accidental detonation of ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

One speculation is that intelligence agencies around the world had information that this event was not an accident, and that it was suspected to be a Mossad job, and for their own reasons, they decided to pass this information onto news organizations and reporters.

For example, it was known and revealed to the public that Barkan had stolen a passport of a Canadian while in China, and had been spotted in North Korea before the explosion in Ryongchon occurred.

The case of Mossad agents stealing New Zealand passports had been reported in New Zealand media.

Therefore, the identities of these Mossad agents came to be known to intelligence agencies.

New Zealand and Australian as well as Canadian intelligence agencies were probably on the trail of these Mossad agents, now that the case of stolen passports had been cracked open in New Zealand. Presumably these intelligence agencies cooperated with each other since these nations were targeted in the passport ring and also because these nations are all allies.

Since it was pointless to hide Mossad involvement in the North Korean affair, the Israeli intelligence agency may have decided not to deny it. Moreover, the Israeli intelligence agency may have released their own reports about the Ryongchon incident to media outlets, reports that supported the event as an act of terrorism, and portrayed North Korea as helping Syria to acquire chemical weapons and nuclear weapons, a constant theme of Israeli propaganda against North Korea, Iran and Syria. If that is the case, this type of leak is similar to the “leaks” made by Mossad to Wikileaks–based on bona fide information–but mixed with misleading information, or paired with legitimate information but presented in a misleading way, in order to make the public draw the wrong conclusions, e.g., the so-called “Pizzagate” affair.

The NGOs have allegedly released vital information in this case. The reports of the sightings of Mossad agent Barkan originate from them.

Because of the sensitivity of the information involved, intelligence agencies may have leaked sightings of Barkan and the clandestine activities of Mossad cells in SE Asia to certain media outlets in order to send warnings about Mossad activity and to expose their dealings.

The other theory is that Mossad orchestrated the ‘leaking’ of all the reports about Mossad activity to the news agencies themselves. It is hard to understand their motive if this is the case, since releasing news of such activities in South-East Asia, including the recruitment of people to join the fake Al Qaeda organization and the various murders of Australian tourists, is disadvantageous to them.

The other possibility is that an ammonium nitrate fertilizer accident happened in North Korea, as North Korea described, and Mossad are taking advantage of this incident, to claim they were behind the explosion, and build a fake story about Syrian scientists and covert WMD transfers.

The amount of detail  given in the reports, such as the presence of a duct-taped cell phone at the explosion site, and the allegation that Barkan was working for a security firm that was looking into building a security fence for the North Korean government, raises questions as to how this information was obtained, if the reports are true. NGOs who have a long-term presence in North Korea, and who act as spies for certain intelligence agencies, may be the source of this intelligence. NGOs and United Nations disaster relief personnel that inspected Ryongchon may have learned this information from locals. Or these details could have been “leaked” by Israel. These reports may be true or the information could have been entirely made up, in order to make the accident look like an act of sabotage. Another alternative is that some of the details are true and some others have been made up.

The report about the Syrian scientists is also interesting. This kind of information can only have come from intelligence sources. There may have been no Syrian scientists killed in this accident and it is just Mossad fabricating a story about supposed Syrian scientists and a cargo of weapons on the train to make propaganda about North Korea, Syria and WMD, as part of a propaganda program that has been going on for many years.

It would be helpful to know if indeed cell phone confiscation took place in May after the explosion. This would support the contention that a cell phone was found in the vicinity of the explosion, which would support the theory that a bomb was involved.

When many ‘reports’ about an event are “leaked”, it raises suspicions that the public are being managed to think about the incident in a certain way. It is unusual for so much information to be released to the media about such an incident, especially when it happens in a closed country like North Korea. The validity of the reports leaked to media organizations and reporters is not known. It’s highly possible some fiction is mixed with facts. On the other hand, the leakers could have had genuine motives and decided to let the public know information that they would not normally be privy to, in order to inform them about the true nature of the Ryongchon incident.

Another possibility is that there was indeed a detonation of a bomb, and its purpose was to assassinate Kim Jong Il, but somehow, the plan went wrong and the wrong information was received, and the assassin detonated the bomb too late to kill the North Korean leader, who had passed through the station nine hours earlier. It’s curious that the bombing happened on the same day that Kim Jong Il was returning to North Korea by train. The bombing happened at 2pm; Kim Jong Il passed through the station at 5am the same day.

There could be several sets of leakers, with differing motives, and even conflicting motives.

The leaking could have been done in retaliation, e.g., to warn off an intelligence agency from doing further criminal acts. There may be frustration that certain governments are not doing enough to curb the criminal acts of a certain intelligence agency, and a wish to expose their acts as a form of punishment and to alert the public as to what is going on.

Another interesting fact is that Iran experienced a very similar event two months before the Ryongchon incident. The details of that incident are almost identical to the Ryongchon one. It, too, involved a train carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer. That incident, like the Ryongchon one, had some strange features.

The fact that an explosion of a train carrying ammonium nitrate fertilizer happened in Iran two months before the North Korean one might be just a coincidence, but Iran is an ally of North Korea and it is known that Mossad has been conducting covert assassinations and kidnappings of Iranian nuclear scientists for some time. Also, Israel bombed an installation in Syria in 2007 that they claimed was a nuclear missile site. So it is known these three countries, North Korea, Iran and Syria, are targets of terrorist action by Israel.

Nothing has been confirmed, including the alleged deaths of Syrian scientists on the train in Ryongchon or the alleged finding of a suspicious cell phone near the site of the explosion, so the account below about the possibility of the railway yard being bombed is mostly based on speculation, and the truth could be that the Ryongchon disaster resulted from an accidental ammonium nitrate fertilizer explosion.

The explosion

Map of radius of damage

Radius of damage is 2 km. Debris from the explosion was found in China 20 km away. The explosion measured 3.6 on the Richter scale. 

More than 6,000 buildings were damaged. 40% of the town was affected. A hospital 1.5 km from the hypocenter had its windows shattered by the blast. 

A huge crater was left behind (72 ft deep). This crater is reminiscent of the craters left behind in testing of nukes for peaceful purposes (construction of harbors, roads, tunnels). See A Nuke Primer: Tactical Nukes

Nature of disaster:

Explosion that destroyed 40% of the town and killed 161 people.

Where:

Ryongchon. Ryongchon County. 123,200  live in the county. 27,000 live in the city.

When:

22 April, 2004, 2pm North Korea time, Kim Jong Il’s train carriage had passed through this town nine hours earlier on his way back from China.

Number killed:

161 (76 were children); an elementary school was near the epicenter of the explosion

        

Left: The gate post at the entrance to Ryongchon Elementary School;  Right: Aerial view of Ryongchon Elementary School after the explosion

Number injured:

1,300 (374 of the 1,300 were hospitalized)

Children were about 50% of the dead; Ryongchon Elementary School was close to the epicenter of the explosion. Many people sufferred shrapnel injuries far from the hypocenter. Glass injuries were frequent. A hospital 1.5 km away sustained shattered windows. 

Property damage:

6,350 buildings were damaged, including 1,850 houses and 12 public buildings; almost half the town was damaged

  

Surveying the damage; salvaging furniture

Number made homeless:

8,000 people (1,850 families)

Boy collecting door knobs

Radius of damage:

2 km. Debris fell in China, 20 km away. Chinese residents heard and saw the explosion. The most serious damage was an area of 1.5 km radius.

Seismic magnitude of explosion:

3.6 on the Richter scale according to seismological stations in Japan (Chosun); this is equivalent to the detonation of 800 tons of TNT

Ryongchon is a city near the border of China and lies on the coast 

Crater size:

15 m deep (49 feet); Joe Vialls in his report says the crater is 21 m (72 feet) deep.

Crater is 49 feet deep (15 meters).

Above: Joe Vialls says it is 72 feet (21 meters). 

Epicenter of the explosion:

Railway line

Above: Railway carriage and railway line at the edge of the crater

Blast radius:

Overpressure of 20 psi at 500 yards (457 m)

               

Left: Ryongchon before and after the explosion.  Right: Overpressure was 20 psi at 500 yards (457 meters)

Estimated yield of bomb:

800,000–1,000,000 kg (0.8–1 kton)  TNT equivalent

Likely bomb type:

Tactical nuke, fission, gun-type (Read more about tactical nukes at A Nuke Primer – Tactical Nukes)

         

Special atomic demolition munition: “backpack nuke” (left); inside the SADM (right). 

          

Davy Crockett nuclear weapon (left); delivery of SADM by parachute (right)

Perpetrator:

Israel (Mossad). Ze’ev Barkan/Lev Bruckenstein (these names are a couple of his many aliases) was identified as the person who detonated the bomb. Ze’ev Barkan is a dual American Israeli citizen.

Target:

Assassination of Syrian and North Korean scientists. Destruction of bomb parts

Ryongchon after the disaster

Post-disaster picture: 40% of the town of Ryongchon was damaged in the explosion. (Source: DigitalGlobe 13 May 20030 (Photo from Global Security)

Before (left) and after (right) pictures of Ryongchon. The estimated size of the nuclear tactical weapon is 800,000 kg TNT. The seismic shock measured 3.6 on the Richter scale. Debris from the explosion reached China 20 km away. Chinese residents heard the explosion. 

Hiroshima atomic bombing caused a similar picture of destruction but on a larger scale and over a wider radius. Hiroshima’s nuke was 15 kilotons of TNT or about 15x the size of the nuke used in Ryongchon. (Picture: Nippon News)

Hiroshima on the left and Ryongchon on the right

Hiroshima on the left and Ryongchon on the right; The radius of damage in the Ryongchon bombing was 2 km. 

#natethayer

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Report: Mossad spy enters North Korea shortly before explosion

Article is from NK News | nate-thayer

The odd tale of a lone Israeli spy and North Korea Explosion kills Syrian technicians on North Korean train, Israeli agent spotted in Pyongyang By Nate Thayer, June 20th, 2013 WASHINGTON D.C.—In the weeks after the mysterious Ryongchon train explosion that killed a dozen Syrian weapons scientists in North Korea on April 22, 2004, the Canadian Office of Foreign Affairs announced they were investigating reports that an Israeli Mossad spy travelling on a stolen Canadian passport was in North Korea at the time of the blast. Zev William Barkan was last seen in late April in Pyongyang, North Korea, after travelling there from Beijing using a Canadian passport issued under the name Kevin William Hunter, according to the Toronto Globe and Mail and other media reports. The Canadian passport of Kevin William Hunter was said to have been reported stolen in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou on April 11, 2004—11 days before the massive blast, measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale, at Ryongchon. “Israel Mossad agent in North Korea?” read the headline in the August 4 Jerusalem Post. “New Zealand passport scam takes Canadian twist.” The Canadian Press reported that “Federal officials are investigating whether a suspected Israeli spy is travelling in Asia on a stolen Canadian passport.” It said “agencies are checking allegations that Zev William Barkan – embroiled in a New Zealand espionage caper – is using a Canadian passport issued under the name Kevin William Hunter.” “That part of the story’s being checked,” said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Reynald Doiron. “All of that being put together, we should have a clearer picture.” He told Canadian CTV television that “We are checking the information. We know some of the answers but not all of them and we are determined to get to the bottom of this.” Governments on five continents have been seeking answers on the clandestine shenanigans of American born Mossad agent Zev Barkan for more than a decade. TINKER, SAILOR, TOLD’YA HE’S A SPY Barkan was at the time wanted by police in New Zealand in an espionage scandal that had erupted in the weeks before the North Korean train explosion. The rare public spy scandal captured New Zealand headlines on April 17, 2004 when two Israeli Mossad agents were charged with attempting to illegally obtain New Zealand passports for the use of the Mossad operative Zev Barkan. When two other Mossad operatives were arrested, Barkan, who was in New Zealand between March 3 and 20th, vanished. As part of the elaborate forged passport ring, Barkan attempted to assume the identity of a severely disabled New Zealand man with cerebral palsy. He obtained the man’s birth certificate and applied for a passport under the New Zealander’s name and submitting Barkan’s real photograph, but his American accent raised the suspicions of a New Zealand official which sparked authorities to investigate. Indeed, five days earlier, on May 19th, North Korea abruptly halted the entire nationwide mobile phone service and confiscated all the 10,000 cell phones in the country. Mobile phone service was not resumed for another five years. Reports emerged in the following days that North Korean investigators had found a damaged cell phone wrapped in duct tape near the site of the blast. Speculation among intelligence agencies and North Korean investigators was that Kim Jong-il, whose personal train had passed through the station nine hours earlier returning form a visit to China, was the target. Still widely unknown were the deaths of the Syrian weapons scientists and the destruction of their illicit cargo in the blast. New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff told New Zealand radio that Barkan was a former Israel Defense Force diver and Israeli agent assigned to Israeli embassies in Vienna and Brussels between 1993 and 2001. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has said there was “no doubt whatsoever” that the men were spies. Secret cables from the American embassy in New Zealand confirmed that U.S. officials knew the arrested men were Mossad agents. “We have very strong grounds for believing these are Israeli intelligence agents,” the cable, released in 2009 by WikiLeaks, said. “While Prime Minister Helen Clark would not confirm which service employed the men, she noted that if one were to lay espionage charges then one would have to be prepared to offer the kind of evidence in court which our intelligence agencies do not like coming forward to display.” One New Zealand news organization reported that “Barkan is being investigated by Macau and Chinese Immigration for his movements in April/May. The investigation includes his alleged use of the U.S. passport in the name of Zev Barkan and a second Canadian passport in the name of Kevin Hunter – which was stolen in Guangzhou China on April 11th.” From New Zealand To Pyongyang The court arraignments on April 16 revealed the arrest of the two Israeli’s on charges of attempting to obtain a New Zealand passport, but Zev William Barkan had “fled the country and authorities concede they would not know where to find him.” But soon reports emerged which placed Barkan, now travelling on a stolen Canadian passport, in Pyongyang in late April, according to the Australian Sydney Morning Herald and other media. And in the ensuing weeks, months, and years, the unlikely saga only became more curious. New Zealand, Canadian, Israeli and Australian media reported that Mossad agent Zev William Barkan was reported seen in Pyongyang working as a security adviser for the North Korean government where he was negotiating a contract to build a security wall along the border with China with Israeli-manufactured motion detectors and night vision equipment. Unconfirmed accounts cited an “Asian-based NGO closely linked to New Zealand intelligence networks” at a conference in Japan on North Korean refugees saying Barkan and other Israeli agents had entered North Korea under the guise of security consultants in April. New Zealand news site scoop.com quoted “a senior NGO chief executive with Global-Protect All Children” as saying “Barkan is there negotiating details of an extensive contract for design and technical equipment to support a security wall project, including- but by no means limited to -Israeli produced motion sensors and night vision equipment.” “Barkan flew from Beijing to Pyongyang at the end of April. He was allegedly travelling on a Canadian passport issued in the name of Kevin Hunter, which had been reported stolen at the Canadian Consulate in the Southern Chinese city of Guangzhou in mid-April.” The account said Israeli experts were conducting a “feasibility study on a security fence along the 1500 KM North Korea China border.” New Zealand believed Barkan “was trying to secure a ‘clean’ passport for use in a sensitive Israeli undercover operation in the region, less risky than a forged passport, “ according to the Sydney Morning Herald. ISRAELI-CANADIANS Canada was already sensitive to Israel’s spy services carrying out black espionage operations under the cover of fraudulent Canadian passports. The Canadian investigation of Barkan followed another investigation Canada carried out only the previous week to determine why one of the two Israeli’s convicted in the passport scandal had used a Canadian passport, rather than an Israeli one, to enter New Zealand in 1999. During his 2004 visit to New Zealand, he entered the country using his Israeli passport. Canadian authorities concluded that the arrested Mossad agent was a “legitimate citizen,” a dual Canadian-Israeli national, and that the Canadian passport he held was “genuine.” But seven years earlier, in 1997, Israel-Canadian relations were severely strained after two Mossad agents carrying Canadian passports were caught trying to kill Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in Jordan. Mashal was injected in the ear with a poisonous toxin. Jordan immediately seized two Mossad agents posing as Canadian tourists and surrounded another six who had fled to the Israeli embassy. Under the threat of execution and an embarrassing public spectacle after being caught red handed, an Israeli doctor was dispatched by airplane to Amman with an antidote for the poison which was administered to the murder target Khaled Mashal, who survived. The deal forced Israel to release from prison Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin. After that diplomatic embarrassment, Israel promised Canada in 1997 that it would cease using Canadian passports. After the Canadian Foreign Ministry announced they were investigating reports that Barkan was travelling on a Canadian passport in North Korea, New Zealand’s foreign minister, Phil Goff, said: “I have read with interest the Canadians are following up allegations he may have traveled at some point on a stolen Canadian passport. When he came to New Zealand my understanding was he was travelling on a U.S. passport. Clearly there would be co-operation between police forces in different countries to try to get to the bottom of these things.” “The passports that Mossad agents tried to obtain illegally might have been reserved for an assassination operation in a third country, which would have caused irreparable damage to New Zealand,” Foreign Minister Phil Goff was also quoted speculating to the Israeli newspaper Haâaretz. In July 2004, a New Zealand media outlet reported a detailed, but unconfirmed account of how the fugitive Mossad agent, Barkan had fled New Zealand to North Korea. In an article headlined “NGOs Claim Wanted Israeli Agent Barkan In North Korea”, the report said “Zev Barkan, the suspected Israeli Mossad agent on the run from New Zealand Police, has been sighted in North Korea, according to an Asian-based NGO closely linked to New Zealand intelligence networks.” The account went on to allege, “Zev William Barkan turned up in Pyongyang as an Israeli security adviser in April, within weeks of fleeing from New Zealand prior to a suspected Israeli spy ring being sprung for attempting to illegally acquire a New Zealand passport.” The reports of the pilfered Canadian passport in Guangzhou, the Chinese city near the North Korean border, was only 11 days before the blast at the Ryongchon train station. On April 22, 2004, a massive explosion tore through the train station in Ryongchon, North Korea, nine hours after North Korean ruler Kim Jong-il passed through returning from a trip to China. Wide speculation that the blast was a botched assassination attempt has lingered for years. BOOMTOWN A number of sources say that North Korean investigators had concluded the explosion was an attempt on the leader’s life, but more logical evidence points to sabotage directed at the cargo of sophisticated missile components destined for Israel’s enemies in Syria. The explosion destroyed 40 percent of the town and had the fingerprints of an Israeli intelligence operation. Within days, North Korean secret police from the Ministry of People’s Security, found that a rigged cell phone triggered the blast. The epicenter of the explosion was in railroad cars where a dozen Syrian missile technicians working for the Syrian Center for Scientific Research were accompanying missile and other components toward to port of Nampo to be shipped to Damascus. All the Syrian scientists were killed. The SSRC is the secret government agency in charge of Syria’s nuclear, missile and chemical weapons development program. Scenes of the devastation April 2004, Ryongchon North Korea On May 24, 2004, South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo reported that a North Korean official visiting China said the North Korean National Security Agency had “concluded that rebellious forces had plotted the explosions.” The paper quoted North Korean sources saying security agencies had determined that a cell phone had been used to detonate the explosion and reported to the North Korean leader that “the use of cell phones should be banned for the sake of the leader’s safety.” Indeed, five days earlier, on May 19th, North Korea abruptly halted the entire nationwide mobile phone service and confiscated all the 10,000 cell phones in the country. Mobile phone service was not resumed for another five years. Reports emerged in the following days that North Korean investigators had found a damaged cell phone wrapped in duct tape near the site of the blast. Speculation among intelligence agencies and North Korean investigators was that Kim Jong-il, whose personal train had passed through the station nine hours earlier returning form a visit to China, was the target. Still widely unknown were the deaths of the Syrian weapons scientists and the destruction of their illicit cargo in the blast. In July, the two Israeli Mossad men in jail in Auckland were convicted in a New Zealand court of the Israeli intelligence passport acquiring scam and sentenced to six months imprisonment by the Auckland High Court. They were ordered to pay NZ $100,000 to a cerebral palsy charity. New Zealand High Court Judge Justice Judith Potter said: “It’s difficult to see why anyone would want a false New Zealand passport unless it was intended to be used in a way ancillary to some other offending (law).” She said: “That offending is likely to be serious or perhaps very serious.” The New Zealand judge may have been prescient. In 2005, the year after the New Zealand passport scandal and the train explosion in North Korea, Barkan was back in the news, accused of trafficking in passports stolen from foreign tourists in Southeast Asia and was said to operate a security business in Thailand. “He goes to Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand and deals with gangs who rob tourists of their valuables and passports,” an aid worker told the Sydney Morning Herald. “Barkan is mostly interested in passports and there have been a number of Australian passports.” After disappearing from New Zealand, unsubstantiated media reports in Australia and New Zealand placed Barkan in Cambodia, accused of running a studio making snuff and porn movies in a town on the Mekong River North of the capital, Phnom Penh, where foreign students and tourists were lured by promises of movie stardom. In January 2010, Zev Barkan was again fingered by authorities–this time the government of Dubai—when a team of 32 Mossad agents carried out the assassination of a senior Hamas leader in a Dubai hotel room. Zev Barkan, using a forged French Passport under the name Eric Rissaneux, was caught on video wearing a fake beard, dressed in sports clothes and carrying a tennis racket, following the Hamas leader up the elevator and down the hallway to his room. Barkan then rented a room across the hall. Dubai police chief publicly named the man using a French passport under the name Eric Rissaneux and other Mossad agents from the Kidon unit of the spy agency, responsible for assassinations and other special operations, as the culprits. There photographs were published and Interpol issued warrants for their arrest for murder. At the time, Zev Barkan still had an outstanding arrest warrant in New Zealand for the passport scandal six years earlier. The Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in a Dubai luxury hotel room in January 2010 by Mossad operatives using Australian, British, Irish, French and Dutch passports, many of them apparently surreptitiously copied from unsuspecting travelling tourists who now had warrants for their arrests for murder. The killers were all caught on hotel and other video cameras, some dressed in wigs, observed frequently changing clothes, some carrying tennis rackets as they stalked the guerrilla leader from the lobby to the elevators to the hallway outside his room. Hotel surveillance camera’s observed the agents using forged electronic room keys to enter the Hamas leader’s room shortly before he returned. He was found suffocated the next day, a paralyzing drug had been injected into his thigh. But the Israeli team was long gone, all 32 having departed Dubai airport for different cities in Europe within an hour of the assassination the previous evening. In August 2010, Dubai police chief Lieutenant-General Dahi Khalfan Tamimut announced that an unnamed “non-European country” had told Dubai in July they had arrested a Mossad suspect in June for the January assassination, but Lt-Gen Tamimut complained the Country had since refused to cooperate or provide details. But then in October, Lt-Gen Tamimut, unhappy with the delay, named Canada as the “non-European country.” “A senior Canadian security official here told me in July that they have made an arrest of one of the suspects,” Lt-Gen Tamimut told The Globe and Mail. .      “We want clarity on this issue. We want the Canadian authorities to tell us exactly what the details are — the thing that is discomfiting is the lack of transparency on this,” he told Reuters. “The person informed me then that this information was not to be released in the media and was only for the police. Since then we have not heard any more information and I don’t understand the secrecy.” Shortly thereafter, the Al Ittihad Arabic daily reported the suspect was one of the two people shown on the hotel’s surveillance cameras wearing tennis outfits and carrying rackets as they followed the Hamas leader to his room up the elevator in the Bustan Rotana Hotel. Later that month in October that year Israeli TV reported that the Mossad agent under arrest in Canada was the assassin using the alias Eric Rassineux. The Israeli Mossad agent Zev Barkin, who fled New Zealand for attempting to obtain a fraudulent passport and was then reported to be in Pyongyang when the mysterious explosion killed Syrian scientists attempting to return home with a cargo of sophisticated weaponry, has since been identified as the man who used the alias Eric Rassineux to murder the Hamas leader in Dubai. But Canada soon refuted the allegations they had anyone in custody related to the Dubai murder, calling the assertion “baseless.” Lt.-Gen. Tamimut also told The Globe that one of the suspects had entered the UAE on a fake Canadian passport. “We have nothing to say at this point,” said Sergeant Greg Cox, a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. “Tamimut said we gave this info to the Dubai police, and we didn’t,” Canadian embassy officials in Dubai told the Globe and Mail. During the height of the dispute between Canada and Dubai in October, the UAE refused Canadian Defense Minister Peter MacKay’s airplane, which was returning from a visit to Afghanistan, permission to fly over Dubai airspace, forcing him to take a circuitous route over Europe. ZEV, ZE’EV, LEV “Former Israeli diplomat to New Zealand Zev William Barkan leads a life akin to that of novelist Frederick Forsyth’s Jackal, emerging from the shadows only to be named by authorities in connection with various crimes before again disappearing,” wrote New Zealand’s Fairfax Media in July 2011. Zev Barkan was born Zev Bruckenstein in 1967 in Washington D.C, where his family owned a “doors and windows business” and his father was director of religious studies at a synagogue. He holds dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship after his family moved to Israel in the 1970’s. Barkan entered New Zealand on a U.S. passport and had an American accent, according to New Zealand officials. Other aliases he has used include Zev William Barkan, Ze’ev William Barkan, and Lev Bruckenstein. He told acquaintances in New Zealand that he was American and his name was Jay. Dubai officials believe he was travelling on a fraudulent French passport using the name Eric Rassineux and Canadian officials were investigating him using the stolen passport of Canadian Kevin William Hunter. New Zealand Foreign Minister Phil Goff told the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz that “The passports that Mossad agents tried to obtain illegally might have been reserved for an assassination operation in a third country, which would have caused irreparable damage to New Zealand.” New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark said “the New Zealand government views the act carried out by the Israeli intelligence agents as not only utterly unacceptable but also a breach of New Zealand sovereignty and international law. The Israeli agents attempted to demean the integrity of the New Zealand passport system and could have created considerable difficulties for New Zealanders presenting their passports overseas in future.” She added: “The Israel government was asked for an explanation and an apology three months ago. Neither has been received.” When reporters for the New Zealand Herald tracked down Ze’ev Barkan’s family in October 2004, they were not well received. In the village of Shoham, 15 miles from Tel Aviv, Ze’ev Barkan wife, Irit, answered the reporter’s phone call but claimed she did not know a Ze’ev. His father, Yossef Barkan was more direct. “Stop calling here, you hear me. I’ve nothing to do with this business. Goodbye.” NKNews | Nate Thayer

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Mossad and pedophilia in Cambodia

“After disappearing from New Zealand, unsubstantiated media reports in Australia and New Zealand placed Barkan in Cambodia, accused of running a studio making snuff and porn movies in a town on the Mekong River North of the capital, Phnom Penh, where foreign students and tourists were lured by promises of movie stardom.”  Nate Thayer

Read more about Mossad and pedophilia at Pizzagate and Zionist Pedophile Rings
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Mossad killing Australians for their passports

From nswcnna.blogspot

Mossad agents Killing Oz Tourists Steal their Identity to use in terror opps The fugitive Israeli Mossad intelligence agent Zev Barkan has been dealing with Asian criminal gangs to obtain Australian and other passports stolen from Australians Killed in Asia, a New Zealand security official has said. Barkan has been named by New Zealand authorities as the kingpin in a passport scam for which two Israelis with Australian links were jailed for six months last week in Auckland. One of the jailed men, Eli Cara, 50, had his rented home in Turramurra raided by ASIO, [an Australian terrorist organisation], in March. A short time later, he was arrested in New Zealand. The New Zealand Government has named Barkan, Cara and the other convicted man, Uriel Kelman, as Mossad agents. Barkan fled New Zealand before police swooped. There are reports that Barkan, allegedly using a fraudulent Canadian passport, has since made visits to North Korea. The New Zealand official, who has intelligence connections in Asia, said Barkan was connected to an ‘Israeli terrorist cell operating out of Thailand’. “He goes to Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand and deals with gangs that he pays to kill tourists steal their Identity papers passports, most just disappear or their deaths have been reported as accidents, drownings and such, they like to throw their victims off the side of tour boats” said a New Zealand security official Barkan is mostly interested in passports and identity documents, there have been a number of Australian killed for their passports.” Intelligence analysts in New Zealand believe Barkan, a former navy diver in the Israeli IOF, was trying to secure a clean passports for use in Israeli terrorist operations in the region. Barkan had grown up in Washington as Zev Bruckenstein, where his father was director of religious studies at a synagogue. A New Zealand security official says his services have uncovered an Israeli operation to create al-Qaeda cells in Thailand. The security official in Thailand said Israeli terrorist are posing as operatives of al-Qaeda. Over the past nine months we have been investigating eight cases, 11 people informed us of this Israeli operation, asking Thai Landers to join al-Qaeda. One email had, [allegedly], even been signed by the al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, a New Zealand official said. [?] A New Zealand official said his services had traced back to Israel the phone calls and emails – purportedly from Germany and Lebanon and Pakistan. We investigated the origin of those calls and found out they all came from Israel. The people the Israelis tried to recruit were then given stolen Australian documents, and received money and weapons. The money was provided by Israel directly to the recruits or was transferred from bank accounts in Jerusalem or Israel, said the New Zealand official. By Harald Gib 19 July 04 nswcnna.blogspot

More information at ArchiveOrg

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“Ze’ev Barkan”, American Mossad agent

Name:
Real surname is Bruckenstein

Other names and aliases:
Zev William Barkan, Ze’ev William Barkan, Eric Rassineux, Kevin William Hunter, Lev Bruckenstein, Jay

Official jobs:
Diver in Israeli Navy (IDF); employee of an Israeli security company in Thailand

Nationality:
US citizen, dual Israeli citizen

Passports he might travel under:
Canadian, New Zealand, Australian, French, US, Israel

Family history:
Grew up in Washington (State?) where his father is the director of a synagogue

Mossad activities (suspected):

• Kingpin in a passport scam in New Zealand
• Pedophile activities in Cambodia
• Theft of Australian passports belonging to Australian tourists in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Burma; working with criminal gangs who steal passports and other valuables of tourists; involved in murder of tourists
• Recruiting members to join Al Qaeda in Thailand
• Murder of Hamas official called Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai
• Detonating bomb in Ryongchon, North Korea, posing as a Canadian security expert, killing 161 people, including 76 children
• Making of snuff films in Cambodia involving children and western tourists

Barkan (real name is Bruckenstein) has altered his appearance with facial hair and glasses

Black and white photo of Bruckenstein

Traveling under a stolen French passport under the name of Eric Rassineux

Passport photos of suspected Mossad agents at Dubai Police; Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was murdered in a hotel in Dubai.

More at Joe Quinn

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The Mossad Murder of Hamas Official

Article from  Joe Quinn

Mossad Psychopaths Behind Murder of Hamas Official in Dubai Above, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh exits the elevator on his floor in the Al-Bustan Rotana hotel, Dubai. Moments later he will be murdered by Mossad agents hiding in his room. Israel is a young nation, yet its intelligence apparatus has a long and sordid history. From staging Muslim terror attacks in Egypt in 1954, to orchestrating ‘Arab’ terrorist hijackings in 1976, to directing ‘al-Qaeda’ terror attacks in 2006, there seems little that the Mossad will not do in an effort to give legitimacy to the Israeli government’s slow genocide of the Palestinian people and bolster the American government’s phony ‘war on terror’. … Read more: Joe Quinn

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“Al Qaeda terrorists” had New Zealand passports

Quoted from NZ City

Terrorists Maybe Using New Zealand Passports NZ City – April 29, 2004 Police fear al Qaeda terrorists using NZ passports following arrest of 2 men in Thailand and seizure of fake NZ passports. There are fears al Qaeda terrorists may be roaming the world, passing themselves off as New Zealanders. It follows the arrest of two men in Thailand, and the seizure of 11 fake New Zealand passports. Police picked up the Thai and his Pakistani accomplice in an undercover raid in Bangkok on Monday …. Read more: NZ City

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Mossad ex-spy says Mossad regularly faked Australian passports

Sydney Morning Herald

Israeli spy agency Mossad regularly faked Australian passports: ex-agent Israel’s Mossad has regularly faked Australian passports for its spies, an ex-agent said today, as anger grew over the use of foreign travel documents for an alleged assassination. Former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky told ABC Radio that the spy agency had used Australian passports for previous operations before last month’s hit on a top Hamas commander in Dubai that has been blamed on Israel. A combo of identity photographs released by the Dubai police, shows the 15 new suspects in last month’s killing in the emirate of top Hamas militant Mahmud al-Mabhuh. Photo: AFP A handout picture posted on the website of Hamas’ Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades armed wing shows Mahmud Abdel Rauf al-Mabhuh, one of the brigades’ founders who died in Dubai on January 20. Photo: AFP ….</em Read more: Sydney Morning Herald

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Australian passports linked to Mossad killers in Dubai

From  Sydney Morning Herald

Australian passports linked to Dubai kill plot FEBRUARY 25 2010 POLICE have named 15 new suspects in the assassination of a Hamas leader in Dubai last month, including three who were allegedly travelling on Australian passports, CNN reported last night. The news network reported police as saying that among the new suspects were six more people who are accused of using British passports in the commission of the crime, four others using Irish passports, two other French passport users and three people, including a woman, travelling on Australian passports…. Read more: Sydney Morning Herald

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How Mossad put on disguises and stalked their prey in Dubai

Article from Sydney Morning Herald

How Israeli killers in many guises stalked their prey FEBRUARY 25 2010 Travelling in twos and threes, arriving on flights from different cities in Europe, they converged on Dubai hours ahead of their quarry. The different pieces of the assassination squad fit together with the precision of a Swiss watch. They carried out their mission with chilling efficiency. On January 20, senior Hamas operative Mahmud al-Mabhuh was found dead in a Dubai hotel room. The world would not learn of his demise until nine days later. Israel’s Mossad secret service remains the prime suspect in what can only be described as a highly choreographed professional killing …. Read more:  Sydney Morning Herald

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Mossad agents and identity theft

Above, Roll of ignominy, from left to right, top to bottom:

1.  ‘Evan Dennings’ – ‘Irish’.
2.  ‘Gail Folliard’ – ‘Irish’.
3.  ‘James Leonard Clarke’ – ‘British’.
4.  ‘Jonathan Louis Graham’ – ‘British’.
5.  ‘Michael Bodenheimer’ – ‘German’.
6.  ‘Paul John Keeley’ – ‘British’.
7.  ‘Michael Barney’ – ‘British’.
8.  ‘Peter Elvinger’ – ‘French’.
9.  ‘Kevin Daveron’ – ‘Irish’.
10.  ‘Melvyn Mildiner’ – British’.
11.  ‘Stephen Hodes’ – ‘British’.

More from Joe Quinn

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Mossad agent Barkan dealing with Asian criminal gangs to obtain passports

Article from  Sydney Morning Herald

Mossad agent linked to Asia scam By Craig Skehan, July 19, 2004 The fugitive Israeli Mossad intelligence agent Zev Barkan has been dealing with Asian criminal gangs to obtain Australian and other passports stolen in Asia, a New Zealand aid worker has said. Barkan has been named by New Zealand authorities as the kingpin in a passport scam for which two Israelis with Australian links were jailed for six months last week in Auckland. One of the jailed men, Eli Cara, 50, had his rented home in Turramurra raided by ASIO in March. A short time later, he was arrested in New Zealand. The New Zealand Government has named Barkan, Cara and the other convicted man, Uriel Kelman, as Mossad agents. Barkan fled New Zealand before police swooped. There are unconfirmed reports that Barkan, allegedly using a fraudulent Canadian passport, has since made visits to North Korea. The New Zealand aid worker, who has intelligence connections in Asia, said Barkan was also connected to an Israeli security company operating out of Thailand. “He goes to Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand and deals with gangs who rob tourists of their valuables and passports,” the aid worker said…. Read more: Sydney Morning Herald

More information ArchiveOrg

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Passports stolen by Mossad are being used in terrorist incidents

Article from Antiwar.com

Passport to Terror by Justin Raimondo Posted on August 06, 2004 In the world of international terrorism, both privatized and state-sponsored, passports and other identity papers are the coin of the realm. Terrorists targeting America are particularly eager to get their hot little hands on Canadian and New Zealand passports, for a number of reasons, most especially because the holders don’t need visas across a wide swathe of the globe, including the United States. Now, as the orange alerts have us wondering when and where the next terrorist strike on American soil will occur, and U.S., British, and Pakistani agents bust up an important Al Qaeda operation, discovering how the terrorists procure travel documents provides important clues as to how they operate – and with whose complicity …. Read more:  Antiwar

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German Government giving citizens’ passports to Mossad

From: rense.com

Israeli Spooks Busted In Deal To Steal German Passports By Christopher Bollyn American Free Press 1-25-6 MUNICH, Germany — Sixty years after the end of the war, Germany remains an occupied nation-both physically and spiritually. While the physical presence of the foreign military occupation is seen only in those places where the occupation forces have bases, the evidence of the spiritual and intellectual occupation is everywhere. Just as in the United States, it is only the alternative and smaller press that tackles the most provocative reporting. The daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger recently reported that Germany’s intelligence agency, the BND, has issued German passports for Israeli Mossad agents carrying out covert operations in places like Iran, where German citizens raise little suspicion. While Israelis are not permitted to enter the country, many Germans travel to Iran, one of Germany’s major trading partners. Mossad is reportedly using German passports, issued in the name of unaware German citizens, for covert missions in Iran including targeting future military air strikes … Read more: rense.com

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THE DISASTER

Bomb hit school: children are 50% of the dead

Above: North Korea said 76 of the 161 dead were children, killed when their school was destroyed. Sign at the gate post says “Ryongcheon Elementary School” (Photo: BBC)

Above: Aid workers at the scene have reported that hospitals are struggling to cope without enough beds or medicine for the hundreds of victims. (Photo: BBC)

Above: Elementary school students in class in Ryongchon Elementary School. (Photo courtesy UNICEF) , Newswire

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Huge crater

The crater was 15 meter deep. Some have estimated the yield of the bomb involved to be 800,000 kg. This yield is consistent with the magnitude of the seismic wave (3.6 on the Richter scale) recorded from the explosion.

From NK News; Photo of crater after explosion, Ryongchon 2004 | Picture credit: David Hill, ECHO

The crater is 15 m (49 feet) deep. (Joes Vialls gives a measurement of 21 m (72 feet) in his article – see below. 

Wrecked train carriages and crater, the epicenter of the explosion in Ryongchon

The video below shows the detonation of a large bomb, a bunker buster – probably not nuclear). A bunker buster penetrates the surface first and then explodes, destroying the bunker. A large amount of dirt and debris is thrown up in the air. This video was added here to show that a large crater, similar to the one in the Ryongchon disaster, forms.

VIDEO: Bunker buster bomb in action  Youtube

As a comparison, this is the crater left by detonation of a bunker buster. 

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Speculated mode of attack

Summary of the attack

Crater depth: 15 m
Crater radius: 20 m
Richter magnitude of the explosion: 3.6
Overpressure: 20 p.s.i.
Radius of damage: 2 km; 1.5 km is the radius of severe damage
Type of burst: Surface
Yield of weapon: 800–1,000 tons of TNT equivalent
Type of weapon: Fission tactical nuclear device (gun-type fission device)

Surface burst

The crater had the characteristics of a contact surface burst, suggesting that the weapon was detonated while it was in contact with the ground or very close to the ground.

Concealment of weapon

Different modes of delivery of the weapon to the target site include concealment on a railway carriage that came from China and was stopped in Ryongchon, North Korea –– Ryongchon has a railway marshalling yard, and there is a train station located there. The mine could have been concealed under the railway carriage, like a limpet mine, or hidden in some luggage or hidden compartment on the train, having been placed there by sabotage.

    

Did Mossad enter North Korea posing as security consultants?

In the Nate Thayer report above, the claim is made that Barkan entered North Korea on a stolen passport of a Canadian and presented himself as an employee of an Israeli security firm, interested in constructing a security fence along the DPRK-Chinese border. This could have given him an opportunity to bring in items that could have been passed off as equipment relating to the construction of a fence, such as models and samples.

Barkan may then have made a surreptitious trip to Ryongchon in the middle of the night and performed the act of sabotaging the railway yard.

The other alternative is that he caught the train to the border on his way out of North Korea and used a stop at Ryongchon to place the bomb at the site.

Another theory is that the bomb had been placed there by others, and Barkan, taking advantage of his location close to Ryongchon, was the one who detonated the bomb remotely by calling the cell phone that had been placed close to the bomb, setting the bomb off.

Furthermore, it’s not clear whether Barkan entered North Korea alone or with other employees of the “security firm”.

Another possibility is that Mossad gained information that ammonium nitrate fertilizer would be on the trains and knew the schedule of the trains and they detonated a pre-planted explosive remotely, using the cell phone that had been rigged to the target site. Note it is not confirmed that Barkan entered North Korea.

Drone may have delivered weapon

Another method of delivery is being dropped from a UAV. A mini UAV being flown across the border from China into North Korean territory, traveling 30 km until it reached Ryongchon, may not have been noticed. Because Ryongchon is near the border with China, this location may have been chosen for the detonation of the device.

     

American SADM (special atomic demolitions munition)

Read about tactical nukes at A Nuke Primer – Tactical Nukes

VIDEO: American SADM Dailymotion

Submarine off the coast may be involved

Alternatively, the mini-UAV could have come from an Israeli submarine that was hiding in the Yellow Sea, off the west coast of North Korea. It could have been launched from a small boat in the sea.

Weapon smuggled across the border?

Another way is the weapon could have been smuggled into North Korea across the border by a human smuggler. However, this method would have a low chance of success as it would be hard for a Mossad agent (who most likely has a western appearance) to swim across the Yalu river or walk across the well-guarded Dandong crossing, and travel 20 km to Ryongchon, all the while carrying a backpack-sized or suitcase-sized nuclear device.

Sino-DPRK Friendship Bridge that links the city of Sinuiju on the North Korean side with Dandong in China. Much traffic crosses between these two cities daily. 

Delivery of bomb – chain delivery? 

The delivery could have been a combination of different methods. The explosive could have been brought into the country by a UAV. Human hands could have found the location of the package that had been dropped off by the UAV by GPS, and then transported it to the precise target site, either to the targeted train carriage or to some site near the railway tracks.

Ryongchon Train Station

Bomb concealed on train?

The concealment of the explosive ordnance on the train carriage carrying the targets for assassination is the most precise way of ensuring the targets are killed, as the bomb is in the same location as the targets for most of the journey.

Because China is a more open country for visitors than North Korea, and a country where visitors can more freely travel around, and the security in that nation is less tight than it is in North Korea, placing a GPS-tracked bomb on a train carriage would be, although difficult, not an impossible task to perform. Smuggling a bomb into China would be relatively easier to do than in North Korea.

Small boat from the submarine and delivery of UAV

Once again, a submarine could be deployed for that operation. A small boat could sail from the submarine, with a UAV on board. At the moment of launching, the ordnance could be strapped onto the UAV, and the UAV made to take off in China’s or North Korea’s direction.

         

Ryongchon is near the coast

Ryongchon is not far from the coast. An appropriately powered long-distance UAV could cover that distance without much difficulty. The same for a drop-off location in China. After dropping off the payload at the designated site, the UAV could return to the boat, and the boat could return to the submarine, which would be resting 50 km or so from the mainland, outside of the territory of China and North Korea, in international waters.

        

Detonation by cell phone

At the appropriate time, Barkan could have detonated the bomb, using the signal from his phone. It could be that a phone was strapped to the bomb itself. When a signal reached that phone, the phone was triggered to detonate the bomb. To do so successfully, Barkan would have needed to be in the zone of the train carriage. He could have persuaded the North Korean authorities that he was visiting as a security expert, wanting to advise them on security on behalf of his company, getting some business for them. Using this excuse, he could have made his way relatively close to the bombing site, and at the right time, detonated the bomb.

Wrecked train carriages – precise hitting of targets

If the bomb was accompanying the targets on the train, the precise timing of the detonation would not have been so important. So long as the targets were on the train at the time of the detonation, the bomb would explode and probably kill them.

It would seem from pictures of the crater that the bomb was indeed on the carriages. The epicenter of the explosion seems to be located precisely at a point on the railway tracks. The explosion looks as if it tore into a carriage.

Destroyed train carriages at the lip of the crater. The carriages on the railway line are at the epicenter of the explosion. 

Trains stopped at Ryongchon Station

It would be much harder to conceal the bomb somewhere near the tracks, and wait for the carriage to pass near that exact point, and detonate the bomb. However, it could have been predicted the train would stop at Ryongchon Station, and the timing of the detonation made to coincide with the stopping of the train. Barkan could have timed his arrival at Ryongchon for the rough time the train arrived, and then rigged the phone to detonate the bomb at the appropriate time – when the train was stopped on the railway tracks near the bomb. Ryongchon could have been chosen because it was a train depot.

Bomb dropped from a drone?

Another method of detonation involves the dropping  of the bomb from an armed drone, and then firing the missile either by remote control or with a proximity fuze. However, in this situation, there is more room for error, as the aiming of the missile at the target could be slightly off by some distance, and the targets could end up surviving the bombing, especially if the train was moving at some speed.

Ammonium nitrate has to be pre-treated to make it explosive

It is unlikely that the cause of the incident was an accidental detonation of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, as the North Korean government reported. First of all, ammonium nitrate has to be treated with chemicals to make it explosive. The explanation offered by the DPRK is that there was an electrical spark, caused by some electrical fault, and that this spark of electricity made contact with the ammonium nitrate fertilizer on the train, igniting the fertilizer and causing the explosion. An explanation of how this ammonium nitrate was made into an explosive mixture is missing.

Ammonium nitrate is the fertilizer compound that can be used in explosives, said John Goodpaster, who researches explosives at Indiana at University-Purdue University Indianapolis. This compound is not found in its pure form in the common fertilizers that are commercially available. And, even in its pure form, ammonium nitrate by itself is not explosive. […]

The fertilizer and the fuel have to be combined in a just the right proportions, Goodpaster said, or else nothing will happen.

“If they’re not mixed the right way, the detonator could go off, but there will be no explosion. It would just burn,” he said.

“The ammonium nitrate is like the engine behind the explosion, but the engine needs fuel,” Goodpaster told Life’s Little Mysteries. In fact, bombs need two components beside the fertilizer: a detonator and a fuel. The fertilizer must be mixed with a fuel in an exact ratio, and the detonator must be able to generate sufficient energy, he said.

Live Science

Ammonium nitrate explosions are incendiary – more fire should have been seen

Another point against an ammonium nitrate explosion is that ammonium nitrate is extremely incendiary. The explosion would start fires. Much of the area where the explosion occurred would be ablaze.

Purpose of the explosion – assassinate Syrian and North Korean scientists

The likely purpose of the detonation of the explosive device was to assassinate the Syrian scientists who were alleged to have been in North Korea at that time. It is rumored that Syrian scientists were on the train carriages that had been blown up at the railway tracks at Ryongchon. It was reported that twelve Syrian scientists were killed in this incident.

Missile and missile components on the train?

According to the report by Nate Thayer, the cargo on the railroad cars was carrying missiles and missile components, and was headed for the port of Nampo, to be shipped to Damascus. However, the rumor that the railway carriage was carrying this missile cargo has not been confirmed.

The epicenter of the explosion was in railroad cars where a dozen Syrian missile technicians working for the Syrian Center for Scientific Research were accompanying missile and other components toward to port of Nampo to be shipped to Damascus. All the Syrian scientists were killed. Nate Thayer

Rumor: Bodies of Syrian scientists picked up by Syrian plane

It has been reported that a Syrian plane came to pick up the bodies of the dead Syrian scientists.

Syrian military aircraft arrived within days under the auspices of delivering humanitarian aid to the civilian blast victims, but departed on May 1 with the bodies of the dead Syrian SSRC employees. Nate Thayer 

However, this report has not been confirmed. The comments about Syrian scientists seem to have come from a Mossad source or from an author who writes books about the Mossad.

Chemical weapons propaganda from Israel

It is highly likely that Israel would try and justify the action of assassinating Syrians by saying they were working on chemical weapons with North Korean scientists. And therefore, they may have deliberately “leaked” this information to reporters and authors. The Israelis have been trying to tie Syria with the use of chemical weapons for years. (See the section on WMD propaganda – Israel’s Propaganda War.)

Left: Head of North Korea reactor fuel plant with head of Syrian Atomic Energy Commission in Syria.  Right: Same North Korean official at the Six-Party Talks. Picture montage: CIA

The latest attempt to associate Syria with chemical attacks was the chemical attack on Syrian citizens in Idlib, Syria in April 2017. Israeli media and Israeli sources blamed the attack on the Syrian government.

Chemical attack in Idlib; many people say Syria was set up

Why would North Korea conceal the real cause of the explosion? 

North Korea probably has its own motives for hiding the real reasons for the explosion, the true cause of which the North Korean government is no doubt aware. Some reasons for hiding the actual cause of the explosion could be to make it easier for North Korea to obtain UN and other international aid for the victims of the explosion.

        

Left: Child injured in the Ryongchon explosion in hospital.  Right: UN observers visiting children in a hospital. 

Sensitive areas of cooperation between Syria and North Korea

Another reason for obscuring the true cause of the explosion could be to hide the fact that the target of the explosion was the Syrians in that country. The North Koreans would have good reason to avoid the news of Syrians collaborating with North Koreans over security and defense projects circulating widely in the international media, if Syrians had been visiting North Korea to discuss mutual military security arrangements. (North Korea and Syria have been allies since the 1960s.)

Rumors of WMD that North Korea and Syria are supposed to be developing or hold have been circulating quite frequently, as part of the atrocity propaganda campaign against those two countries, so it would be understandable if North Korea did not want to fan the flames of anti-North Korea WMD propaganda against it further with this revelation. The reason for the Syrian nationals visiting North Korea may have been twisted into something that was not true, and used in the atrocity smear campaign against those two nations.

And the Syrian government, too, might have their own reasons for not wanting the presence of their nationals in North Korea at the time of the explosion to become public knowledge, if Syrian nationals had indeed been victims in this blast.

Of course, it is not confirmed that Syrians were injured or killed in the attack, nor that Syrians were in North Korea at the time of the disaster in the first place. This is speculation that the motive of the attack was to murder Syrian nationals who were in North Korea at that time.

Israeli assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists

Israel has been targeting Iranian nuclear scientists up until recently over the past decade. At last count, Israel attacked seven Iranian scientists, using Iranian proxies or Mossad agents. Five died, and two survived.

KCNA, the state news service, apparently confirmed the Xinhua report by stating the incident was “due to the electrical contact caused by carelessness during the shunting of wagons loaded with ammonium-nitrate fertilizer” Wikipedia

Fallen power lines explanation

In another report, by the BBC, it was reported that fallen power lines had caused the problem.

Officials said a power line had collapsed, igniting an oil tanker and wagons laden with ammonium nitrate fertiliser. BBC

Crater and bomb yield

The explosion created a crater that was 15 meters deep and approximately 20 meters in radius, in dry soil, which suggests a weapon yield of around 1,000 kg (1 kton of TNT equivalent) – see below.

       

Left: Underground Sedan Test (100 kton).  Right: Ryongchon (0.8–1 kton) crater. See A Nuke Primer – Tactical Nukes

Concealment of 800 kg of TNT would be virtually impossible in North Korea: tactical nuke only option left

Since transporting this quantity of TNT to a site would be inconvenient and hard to conceal, the weapon is likely to have been something portable but with considerable explosive power, such as a tactical nuke. The tactical nuke probably had a gun-firing mechanism to initiate fission.

Cell phone detonated the tactical nuke? 

And it was probably set up in such a way that it could be fired by remote control, from a nearby phone signal of a cell phone, allowing for more precise control of the detonation. Once the cell phone signal activated the bomb, the conventional chemical explosive would detonate, hitting the uranium target, and setting off the chain reaction of fission in the nuclear bomb.

Reports emerged in the following days that North Korean investigators had found a damaged cell phone wrapped in duct tape near the site of the blast. Nate Thayer

Cell phone found nearby the bomb site

A cell phone was reported to have been found nearby after it happened, but this report has not been confirmed.

Within days, North Korean secret police from the Ministry of People’s Security, found that a rigged cell phone triggered the blast. Nate Thayer

Explosion recorded 3.6 on the Richter scale

Seismic centers in Japan reported that the Ryongchon explosion was 3.6 on the Richter scale. This would be consistent with the detonation of 800,000 kg of TNT. This finding is similar to the results obtained by analyzing the dimensions of the crater and the area of damage – see below.

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Ammonium nitrate theory examined

Dynamite suspected in one ammonium nitrate accident

Also, in one ammonium nitrate accident in Germany in 1921, it is believed that the workers were using dynamite in the manufacturing process. This would have easily caused the explosion of the ammonium nitrate. However, the real cause cannot be determined as all the people involved in working there died in the explosion.

Ammonium nitrate by itself is not explosive

Ammonium nitrate needs a detonator to be added in order to make it explosive.

Chemicals have to be added in the perfect proportion

The detonator needs to be in the right proportion to the ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

It is quite difficult to make a fertilizer bomb because of the nature of the chemistry. In its pure form, ammonium nitrate by itself is not explosive.

How can fallen electrical cables penetrate the outer cover of a train carriage?

It is likely that the ammonium nitrate, if there was any in the trains, was covered. The fallen electrical cable would have to have penetrated the carriage’s metal casing and reached the ammonium nitrate to spark a fire. This is an unlikely scenario.

livescience.com

How Do Fertilizer Bombs Work? By Karen Rowan, Health Editor | May 3, 2010 11:32am ET A crude car bomb discovered in New York’s Times Square this weekend was found to contain gasoline, propane and fertilizer, according to police. Fortunately, the would-be bomber used a type of fertilizer that is not explosive. Experts say that it is actually quite difficult to make a bomb using fertilizer, because of the nature of the chemistry of the explosion. Ammonium nitrate is the fertilizer compound that can be used in explosives, said John Goodpaster, who researches explosives at Indiana at University-Purdue University Indianapolis. This compound is not found in its pure form in the common fertilizers that are commercially available. And, even in its pure form, ammonium nitrate by itself is not explosive. “The ammonium nitrate is like the engine behind the explosion, but the engine needs fuel,” Goodpaster told Life’s Little Mysteries. In fact, bombs need two components beside the fertilizer: a detonator and a fuel. The fertilizer must be mixed with a fuel in an exact ratio, and the detonator must be able to generate sufficient energy, he said. How bombs explode The first thing that happens during a fertilizer bomb blast is the explosion of the detonator. It contains a small amount of an explosive compound in it, and when it discharges, it creates what experts call a detonation wave. This detonation wave radiates outward from the detonator at a speed of about 2 to 3 miles per second through the mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel, Goodpaster said. The energy of the detonation wave causes the ammonium nitrate in the fertilizer to vaporize – the solid fertilizer becomes a gas in an instant. The ammonium and nitrate molecules break down, and a large amount of oxygen gas is suddenly formed. The gas released from the decomposing fertilizer is what drives the explosion. The rapid release of oxygen, along with the energy from the detonation wave, ignites the fuel. When the liquid fuel ignites, it rapidly combusts, and even more gas is released. “All that gas is generated in a very short amount of time,” Goodpaster said. “That’s what causes the pressure waves of the explosion.” The pressure waves travel at the speed of sound, about 1,100 feet (343 meters) per second, and can damage nearby structures or even kill bystanders if the waves are strong enough, Goodpaster said. Heat is also released during the combustion, and it may be enough to set a car on fire, but most of the damage from such explosions is due to the pressure waves. Perfect mix needed The fertilizer and the fuel have to be combined in a just the right proportions, Goodpaster said, or else nothing will happen. “If they’re not mixed the right way, the detonator could go off, but there will be no explosion. It would just burn,” he said. Household fertilizer contains chemicals other than ammonium nitrate, said Steven Van Kauwenbergh, principal scientist with the International Fertilizer Development Center, a non-profit industry group. When other chemicals such as ammonium sulfate or urea are mixed in, the ammonium nitrate is no longer able to explode, he said. Accidents involving fertilizer explosion are very rare, Van Kauwenbergh said. Perhaps the worst such accident was an explosion that occurred in Germany in 1921. Workers at a fertilizer plant were using dynamite to try to break up a large mass of solidified fertilizer that had formed and was clogging up the functioning of the plant, he said. In the ensuing explosion, at least 500 people were killed. Reprinted from livescience.com

Ammonium nitrate fertilizer is called a “marginal explosive” and is considered much safer than dynamite or TNT. It is less likely than either of these two explosives to go off during handling. Special conditions are required to make the fertilizer explode. The carriages in the Ryongchon incident would have had to have been open to the outside in order for the electric cables to have come in contact with the oil in the oil tanker and the ammonium nitrate fertilizer.

Officials said a power line had collapsed, igniting an oil tanker and wagons laden with ammonium nitrate fertiliser. BBC

In the photo below, the carriages in the foreground, at the edge of the crater, seem to be closed carriages, with a roof. The carriages at the back may not have roofs but these carriages seem to be relatively intact. If the explosion started with the ammonium nitrate and oil in the trains, the explosions would have spread throughout the carriages, destroying them. The picture shows relatively intact carriages that seem to be cut off abruptly at the edge of the crater.

In addition, there is little sign of fire damage to the carriages such as blackened hulls. Nor do the surrounding buildings show much signs of fire damage, although they seem to have been damaged by the blast wave.

Ammonium nitrate fertilizer isn’t really a dangerous explosive (most of the time) Fertilizer can explode*. We all know that. It was a key ingredient in the bomb that destroyed Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in 1995. Last night, a factory full of the stuff went up with enough force that United States Geological Survey seismographs registered it as a magnitude 2.1 earthquake. Ammonium nitrate is the chemical that makes these dramatic displays possible. But creating an explosion isn’t as simple as just having a pile of ammonium nitrate — let alone a pile of fertilizer — sitting around. We’ve come to think of this as pretty volatile stuff. But, according to chemist Jimmie Oxley, ammonium nitrate is a lot less dangerous than you might guess … Read more at ammonium nitrate fertilizer

#iran

Almost identical train explosion happened in Iran two months before the North Korean one

An almost identical accident, involving a runaway train of 51 wagons that dislodged itself in the middle of the night and rolled down the track for 20 km, occurred in Iran in the same year (2004) – coincidence or not? Like the Korean event, the explosion registered 3.6 on the Richter scale. 326 people were killed.

“The smoke rose like the mushroom cloud in Hiroshima,” said Fereydoun Saki, an ambulance driver in Neyshabur who had ferried the injured to nearby a hospital. It spewed a coat of yellow sulfur across the countryside, creating a stench that could be smelled for miles downwind.

SFGate

A Hiroshima survivor recalls how the smell of sulfur was prominent after the blast of the atomic bomb.

A little later, I smelt something like sulfur. It smelt like the volcano, Mt. Aso and I threw up.

Gizmodo: This Is How It Feels to Be Under a Nuclear Attack

Rescuers on Thursday search debris at the site of the train explosion, which occurred near Neyshabur, 435 miles east of Tehran.

Nishapur train disaster The Neishabur train disaster was a large explosion in the village of Khayyam, near Nishapur in Iran, on 18 February 2004. Over 300 people were killed and the entire village destroyed when runaway train wagons crashed into the community in the middle of the night and exploded. Beginning of incident The incident began in the city of Nishapur, where 51 railway wagons carrying sulphur, fertiliser, petrol and cotton wool broke loose from their siding at Abu Muslim Station, and rolled down the track for about twenty kilometers, until they derailed and rolled down an embankment into the town of Khayyam. There was nobody manning the wagons, or on board at the time of the crash, but local rescue services from all the neighbouring towns arrived to rescue anybody who might have been trapped inside, and to extinguish several minor fires which had broken out in the wreckage. Chemical leak The substances in the wagons were all highly explosive or flammable (although the Iranian railway authority had not classed any of them as “dangerous” before the incident), and had leaked following the crash. As the small fires spread, a large crowd of local people, including several local politicians and senior railway officials gathered to watch the emergency operation. Explosion During the cleanup operation, the cargo of the wagons exploded, reportedly the equivalent of 180 tons of TNT, which demolished Khayyam, badly damaged the nearby towns of Eyshabad, Dehnow and Taqiabad, and could be felt in the city of Mashhad, 70 kilometers away. The entire village was destroyed, and all of the local emergency services and government personnel were killed or seriously injured in the blast. The wreckage of the train and village continued to burn and explode for several days, despite the freezing cold weather. Death toll The total death toll is not known. State authorities identified 295 confirmed killed and over 460 injured, including 182 rescue workers and state officials. Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Following the blast, troops from the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps were called in and were able to maintain security, whilst hundreds of rescue workers were brought in to help with the injured, the trapped, the missing and the dead. Four villages were later described as “totally destroyed”. Cause Initial reports that “earth tremors” started the wagons rolling have since been discredited, and a thorough investigation has so far failed to discover how exactly the wagons were able to travel from Nishapur to Khayyam on their own, why so many highly flammable cargoes were stored and transported together, and why the details of the crash weren’t discovered sooner, perhaps in time to arrange an evacuation. A statement from the Iranian Transport Minister Ahmad Khorram shortly after the incident reported that natural causes could not have caused the disaster, and that an investigation was under way to determine whether it was incompetence or malice by railway staff that allowed the wagons to come loose from where they were parked. Wikipedia

More reports:

• NBC
• BBC

This article explains the key ingredients and the process of making a fertilizer bomb.

How Do Fertilizer Bombs Work? By Karen Rowan, Health Editor | May 3, 2010 11:32am ET A crude car bomb discovered in New York’s Times Square this weekend was found to contain gasoline, propane and fertilizer, according to police. Fortunately, the would-be bomber used a type of fertilizer that is not explosive. Experts say that it is actually quite difficult to make a bomb using fertilizer, because of the nature of the chemistry of the explosion. Ammonium nitrate is the fertilizer compound that can be used in explosives, said John Goodpaster, who researches explosives at Indiana at University-Purdue University Indianapolis. This compound is not found in its pure form in the common fertilizers that are commercially available. And, even in its pure form, ammonium nitrate by itself is not explosive. “The ammonium nitrate is like the engine behind the explosion, but the engine needs fuel,” Goodpaster told Life’s Little Mysteries. In fact, bombs need two components beside the fertilizer: a detonator and a fuel. The fertilizer must be mixed with a fuel in an exact ratio, and the detonator must be able to generate sufficient energy, he said. How bombs explode The first thing that happens during a fertilizer bomb blast is the explosion of the detonator. It contains a small amount of an explosive compound in it, and when it discharges, it creates what experts call a detonation wave. This detonation wave radiates outward from the detonator at a speed of about 2 to 3 miles per second through the mixture of ammonium nitrate and fuel, Goodpaster said. The energy of the detonation wave causes the ammonium nitrate in the fertilizer to vaporize – the solid fertilizer becomes a gas in an instant. The ammonium and nitrate molecules break down, and a large amount of oxygen gas is suddenly formed. The gas released from the decomposing fertilizer is what drives the explosion. The rapid release of oxygen, along with the energy from the detonation wave, ignites the fuel. When the liquid fuel ignites, it rapidly combusts, and even more gas is released. “All that gas is generated in a very short amount of time,” Goodpaster said. “That’s what causes the pressure waves of the explosion.” The pressure waves travel at the speed of sound, about 1,100 feet (343 meters) per second, and can damage nearby structures or even kill bystanders if the waves are strong enough, Goodpaster said. Heat is also released during the combustion, and it may be enough to set a car on fire, but most of the damage from such explosions is due to the pressure waves. Perfect mix needed The fertilizer and the fuel have to be combined in a just the right proportions, Goodpaster said, or else nothing will happen. “If they’re not mixed the right way, the detonator could go off, but there will be no explosion. It would just burn,” he said. Household fertilizer contains chemicals other than ammonium nitrate, said Steven Van Kauwenbergh, principal scientist with the International Fertilizer Development Center, a non-profit industry group. When other chemicals such as ammonium sulfate or urea are mixed in, the ammonium nitrate is no longer able to explode, he said. Accidents involving fertilizer explosion are very rare, Van Kauwenbergh said. Perhaps the worst such accident was an explosion that occurred in Germany in 1921. Workers at a fertilizer plant were using dynamite to try to break up a large mass of solidified fertilizer that had formed and was clogging up the functioning of the plant, he said. In the ensuing explosion, at least 500 people were killed.

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Crater examination in detail

Depth of the crater

Depth of the crater: 50 feet (15 m). Most of the crater consists of dry soil.

The crater in the Ryongchon disaster measured 50 feet (15 meter deep). 

Radius of the crater

From aerial views of the disaster, the radius of crater can be estimated to be around 20 meters.

The crater is outlined in red and is at the center-bottom of the picture. The large area outlined in red shows the area of severe damage. The elementary school is outlined in green. Half of the dead were elementary-school children. The radius of the crater is approximately 20 meters. (Photo: nkeconwatch)

Type of burst

The explosion at Ryongchon created a crater that looks like the one in b., a surface burst. There seems to be little subsidence in the crater.  Fourmilab

Underground nuclear tests must be buried at large depths and carefully sealed in order to fully contain the explosion. Shallower bursts produce large craters and intense local fallout. The situation shown here is for an explosion with a 1 KT yield and the depths shown are in feet. Even a 0.1 KT burst must be buried at a depth of approximately 230 feet to be fully contained. (Adapted from Terry Wallace, with permission.) (Federation of American scientists).  (Note 100 feet = 30.48 meters)

Sedan Test. Storax crater. This was an underground 100 kton nuclear test. Like the Ryongchon explosion, the crater was formed in dry soil.

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Blast effects examined in detail

Overpressure

In this explosion, twelve public buildings were destroyed. Since they were likely to have been built with concrete, the overpressure is probably around the 20 p.s.i. mark. The radius of damage was 2 km. Chinese residents heard and saw the explosion (Ryongchon is 20 km from the border). 40% of the town was damaged.

Image from Princeton Edu A. Glaser

Seismic shock 

According to a May 16, 2004 Chosun Ilbo report, the explosion recorded 3.6 on the Richter scale. (English Chosun)

– Japan reports to the media that the explosion in Ryongchon Station was 3.6 on the Richter scale.

– This would be equivalent to an explosion of 800 tons of TNT.

– The sources say they got the information from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO).

– North Korea’s KCNA reported that the explosion was equivalent to 100 tons of TNT. They explained the cause of the accident as  “the electrical contact caused by carelessness during the shunting of wagons loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and tank wagons”.

– The CTBTO said that the explosion’s seismic record had been observed in seismological observation stations in Korea, Japan, the United States and Russia.

– In Japan’ case, stations in Nagano, Oita and Okinawa picked up the Ryongchon blast.

– The CTBTO collected data from various observation posts, analyzed the data at its International Data Center, and estimated the size of the blast.

From English Chosun

TOKYO — Japan’s Kyodo News, citing numerous diplomatic sources in Vienna, reported Saturday that the force of April 22’s train explosion at the North’s Ryonchon [sic] Station was about that of an earthquake measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale, which would have required about 800 tons of TNT — about eight times that officially announced by North Korea.

The sources referred to earthquake figures gotten by the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. […]

In Japan’ case, seismological observation stations in Nagano, Oita and Okinawa picked up the Ryongchon blast.

The CTBTO collected data from various observation posts, analyzed the data at its International Data Center and estimated the size of the blast. About a week after the explosion, it provided the data to CTBT member states.

Chosun Ilbo

For comparison, the nuclear test done by North Korea in 2006, and estimated to be of a less than 1 kton yield was 4.1 on the Richter scale. (Ref: Wall Street Journal)

Radius of blast effects

Picture showing the extent of the debris field; debris landed in China 20 km away. A hospital located 1.5–2 km from the epicenter sustained damage. (Map is from Joe Vialls, see his article below)

Surface burst of an 800 kg bomb

The yield of the weapon which was detonated as a contact surface burst was 0.8–1 kiloton (800 – 1,000 tons of TNT equivalent) approximately.

For contact surface bursts, approximate values of the crater dimensions can be given. For a 1-kiloton nuclear explosion at the surface, the apparent radius of the crater in dry soil or dry soft rock is estimated to be about 60 feet. The radius at the crest of the lip will be 15 feet or so greater. The apparent depth of the crater is expected to be about 30 feet.

Fourmilab 

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The weapon: a mini-nuke?

Adapted from Wikipedia: W54

Tactical nukes: Mini-nukes and micro-nukes

The smallest nuke deployed in the United States was the W54. It was compact in size. It was used as the warhead in the man-portable M-388 Davy Crockett weapon. The Davy Crockett incorporated a gun that was used for firing a nuclear warhead.

A modified version of the W54 nuclear warhead, the M-388, was used in the man-portable M-388 Davy Crockett projectile (Mk-54). The unusually small size of the warhead is apparent. (Image: Wikipedia)

       

The Davy Crockett projectile. It fired micro-nuclear devices.

There were four distinct models based off the W54 design, with varying yields. In order of yield are:

1. Mk-54 (Davy Crockett) — 10 or 20 ton yield, used for the Davy Crockett artillery warhead
2. Mk-54 (SADM) — variable yield of 10 ton to 1 kiloton (1,000 tons), Special Atomic Demolition Munition device (backpack nuclear devices or “suitcase nukes”)
3. W-54 — 250 ton yield, warhead for AIM-26 Falcon air to air missile
4. W72 — 600 ton yield, it is a rebuilt W-54 (Falcon warhead) for AGM-62 Walleye

Therefore, the MK-54 (SADM), W-54 and the W72 would have been suitable for the bombing operation in Ryongchon since they would have been of sufficient yield.

All four variants share the same basic core: a nuclear system which is 10.75 inches in diameter (270 mm), about 15.7 inches long (400 mm), and weighs around 50 pounds (23 kg) or slightly over.

The W54 is small enough to be deployed as an SADM (Special Atomic Demolition Munition) or so-called “backpack nuke”. It was the closest thing the U.S. is known to have to developed to a “suitcase bomb”.

Img: Caption: The W-54 would have fit into the Special Atomic Demolition Munition (“backpack nuke”) casing (Wikipedia)

The W-54 was tested for use as far back as the 1960s, in a U.S. Navy SEALs project, and was found to be feasible as a portable nuclear weapon. It was designed to attack a harbor or other strategic location that could be accessed from the sea. The SEALs version would be delivered into the water by parachute jump from a plane, along with a two-man team. After this, the backpack nuke was floated to the target, set in place, and armed by hand.

Parachutists delivering a special atomic demolition munition (SADM) that is strapped onto their backs. 

The above is adapted from Wikipedia

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Delivery of the weapon by a drone?

It’s possible that the weapon was delivered to its destination by drone. Small drones can cross the border undetected, and deliver its payload, which would be the size of a backpack and weigh only 23 kg in the case of a mini-nuke (tactical nuke or suitcase/backpack nuke or SADM), onto the ground at the target location. Because of its small size, the drone can easily be mistaken for a large bird by an observer at some distance from the drone.

Soldiers working on a UAV

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Types of injuries in Ryongchon are consistent with a nuclear explosion

Overpressures and corresponding damage

1 – 2 psi
Glaser*	2 psi = Glass damage/light damage
Injuries chart	1 psi = Glass fragments causing skin lacerations
Radshelters chart	2 psi = Light damage to commercial buildings
Atomic Archive	1 psi = Window glass shatters; light injuries from fragments occur
5 psi
Glaser*	5 psi = Light housing destroyed
Injuries chart	5 psi = Eardrum failure threshold
Radshelters chart	5 psi = Moderate damage to commercial-type buildings
Atomic Archive	5 psi = Most buildings collapse; injuries are universal
Nukefix	5 psi = Home totally destroyed
10 psi
Glaser*	10 psi = Brick housing/commercial buildings destroyed
Radshelters chart	10 psi = Heavy damage to commercial-type building and equipment
Atomic Archive	10 psi = Reinforced concrete buildings are severely damaged or demolished. (Most people are killed.)
Nukefix	15 psi = Total destruction of a factory except 2 smokestacks
20 psi
Glaser*	20 psi = Reinforced concrete structures destroyed
Injuries chart	15 -20 psi = 50% eardrum failure; 15 psi = Lung damage threshold; 30 psi = Overpressure lethality threshold
Radshelters chart	20 psi = Destruction of all except hardened facilities
Atomic Archive	20 psi = Heavily built concrete buildings are severely damaged or demolished

Eye injuries from glass

Eye injuries are common among the victims of the Ryongchon disaster, according to the WHO report. 90 patients (about 25% of those admitted to the hospital for treatment) were reported as having eye injuries, mainly due to glass penetrating injuries. Eye injuries from glass shards is common in nuclear blasts because of the blast force of the nuclear explosion. High-velocity winds are generated in a nuclear explosion, generating high overpressure.

Yukiharu did not realize at first that a bomb had exploded. He thought there had been an electrical accident at the plant building he was working in. Then it suddenly became dark and “I heard a huge explosion. The roof of the building had collapsed, and we were under the broken roof. I felt a pain in my head. I managed to escape from the building. I did not know what was happening to us, because we had not experienced any serious bombing. . . . I was not badly hurt. . . . A piece of broken glass was sticking into my head.” [Hiroshima]

dickinson.edu

In Hiroshima, glass injuries were common

In the Hiroshima atomic explosion, glass injuries were also very common, even amongst people far from the epicenter.

According to the WHO Representative in Pyongyang, who visited the hospitals today, the majority of injuries are to the face and head, with cuts from glass, bruises and burns. Around 90 patients have eye injuries, the majority due to glass penetrating one, and in some cases, both eyes. Multiple injuries with fractures, open and closed head injuries and internal injuries were also commonly seen. WHO

Nagasaki atomic bombing – torrent of glass splinters

Nagasaki: The blast slapped people against walls and showered them with a torrent of bullet-like glass splinters and debris

Ordinary wooden houses within a radius of one kilometer of the hypocenter were completely destroyed. Even the concrete buildings left standing were reduced to hollow shells. The buildings collapsed in one direction as if pointing toward the hypocenter. The blast wind slapped people against walls and showered them with a torrent of bullet-like glass splinters and debris.

Nagasaki City

Burns 

Burns were also reported as common injuries in the Ryongchon disaster. In a nuclear explosion, thermal energy is released from the fireball. This can cause flash burns in patients within a large radius of the explosion.

According to the WHO Representative in Pyongyang, who visited the hospitals today, the majority of injuries are to the face and head, with cuts from glass, bruises and burns.   WHO

Respiratory injuries

Some victims of the disaster experienced respiratory symptoms. As time goes on, the symptoms may worsen and become chronic.

Some patients have presented with respiratory symptoms, although so far none severe.  WHO 

Respiratory problems will arise frequently in nuclear blasts due to the inhalation of radioactive particles that release radiation in the lungs and do damage to the cells. Also, many fine dust particles are generated in a nuclear explosion due to the high energy of such explosions. These particles of concrete dust and other particularized debris are easily inhaled into the lungs, where they cause irritation and inflammation of the bronchioles, resulting in coughing and other symptoms, including difficulty in breathing.

County hospital at 1.5 – 2 km from hypocenter had glass blown out

The county hospital, about 1.5-2 km from the explosion site, had all its windows broken, and has not been functioning since the explosion. Some temporary plastic sheets are now covering windows on the first floor, and the hospital will open for out-patients today. One polyclinic was totally destroyed by the explosion and the Hygiene and Anti-epidemic station and medical ware house was partially damaged.

A downtown Las Vegas window, showing how the glass was sucked out by the rarefaction wave, rather than pushed in by the compression wave resulting from the November 1, 1953, nuclear test at the Nevada Test Site. Glasstone

Types of injuries and p.s.i. blast pressure

Types of injuries and p.s.i. blast pressure (p.s.i. stands for pounds per square inch). 

Static overpressure

Static overpressure, i.e., the sharp increases in pressure due to compression of the atmosphere. These pressures are those which are exerted by the dense wall of air that comprises the wave front. The magnitude of the overpressure at any given point is directly proportional to the density of the air in the wave.

Overpressure	Physical Effects
20 psi	Heavily built concrete buildings are severely damaged or demolished
10 psi	Reinforced concrete buildings are severely damaged or demolished. Most people are killed.
5 psi	Most buildings collapse. Injuries are universal, fatalities are widespread.
3 psi	Residential structures collapse. Serious injuries are common, fatalities may occur.
1 psi	Window glass shatters Light injuries from fragments occur

Chart from Atomic Archive

Blast effects are usually measured by the amount of overpressure, the pressure in excess of the normal atmospheric value, in pounds per square inch (psi)

As a general guide, city areas are completely destroyed by overpressures of 5 psi, with heavy damage extending out at least to the 3 psi contour.

Health report on the Ryongchon train explosion

From WHO Health update on the Ryongchon train explosion Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Train blast victim. A child receiving blood transfusion using a bag from WHO. Sinuiju Provincial Hospital 27 APRIL 2004 – The explosion at Ryongchon has resulted in the death of at least 160 people, of which 76 were children. Many of these children were attending the nearby primary school when the explosion occurred. Due to damage to the Ryongchon County hospital, the injured requiring hospitalization have been referred to four hospitals in Sinuju, the provincial capital of North Pyongan province, about 20 kilometers from Ryongchon. More than 1300 people are reported injured, and 370 have been admitted to hospital, about two-thirds of them children. In the last two days, four of these patients have died, and WHO estimates that 15% remain in critical condition. According to the WHO Representative in Pyongyang, who visited the hospitals today, the majority of injuries are to the face and head, with cuts from glass, bruises and burns. Around 90 patients have eye injuries, the majority due to glass penetrating one, and in some cases, both eyes. Multiple injuries with fractures, open and closed head injuries and internal injuries were also commonly seen. About one quarter of the patients have less serious injuries, and these people could be discharged in the coming week. Considering the circumstances, medical treatment is reported as reasonable. Medicines and medical supplies, including intravenous fluids, antibiotics and analgesics provided by the Ministry of Public Health, the World Health Organization and other international agencies, were available in each of the hospitals. There are shortages however of certain commodities and medicines such as different eye preparations, topical creams and sterile vaseline compresses for burns as well as a lack of some antibiotics. At the request of authorities, WHO will provide some of these supplies along with surgical instruments. WHO has also ordered additional eye medicines and equipment to treat the large number of eye injuries, and stands by to assist with more as required. Some patients have presented with respiratory symptoms, although so far none severe. It is important to systematically register these as part of the strengthening of disease surveillance after the disaster, in particular because of the possible toxic impact of ammonium nitrate from the explosion. WHO’s discussed these points with with health authorities in Ryongchon. As people get better and are discharged, WHO considers that follow-up counseling and community outreach programmes will be important, especially considering the number of children affected. WHO response summary WHO has been part of an international delegation which has traveled twice to the explosion site and to hospitals. Last weekend, WHO delivered medical supplies and equipment valued at about US$100,000 to Ryongchon and Sinuju. These supplies were transported from existing stocks in Pyongyang. This week, the government of Japan is providing ten Basic Health Kits and burn dressing kits. The total cost of this donation is also valued at US$100,000. These supplies will begin reaching DPR Korea by Thursday, 29 April. Ryongchon In Ryongchon itself, temporary shelters with tents have now been established. Many people are still on the move within the town with their belongings. Work has also started with repair of houses. The county hospital, about 1.5-2 km from the explosion site, had all its windows broken, and has not been functioning since the explosion. Some temporary plastic sheets are now covering windows on the first floor, and the hospital will open for out-patients today. One polyclinic was totally destroyed by the explosion and the Hygiene and Anti-epidemic station and medical ware house was partially damaged. It is important to restore normal health services in Ryongchon as soon as possible. WHO

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#joevialls

Joe Vialls: Ryongchon was a mini-nuke

Article from The Unhive Mind

Ryongchon – Nuclear Trigger for American Conscription? South Korean “official” accurately announced the shocking level of damage only one hour after the blast, long before the North Koreans could even reach Ryongchon’s ground zero Copyright Joe Vialls, 25 April 2004 The Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM) is a U.S. Navy and Marines project dating back to the mid sixties, and still operational today with weapons ranging from 10 to 5,000 tons TNT equivalent yield. The backpack nuclear weapon is designed to allow one man to parachute from any type of aircraft carrying the weapon package which is placed in a harbor or other strategic location that can be accessed covertly by sea or by air. Another parachutist without a weapon package follows to provide support. The two-man team places the weapon package in the desired location, arms the radio detonator, then hopefully escapes by waiting submarine …. Read more at  The Unhive Mind

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Blast damage – aerial views

Overview of the probable area of the blast. (Source: DigitalGlobe 13 May 20030 (Photo from Global Security)

Close-up of the crater. Scraping activity is visible as are two probable pieces of North Korean earth moving equipment (source: DigitalGlobe 27 April 2004) (Global Security)

Post-disaster picture

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BBC: Images of the Ryongchong disaster

From link: BBC

The explosion on Thursday gouged out a massive crater – aid workers said it looked like a fireball had hit the area.

North Korea said 76 of the 161 dead were children, killed when their school was destroyed.

The true scale of the disaster emerged when aid workers reached the devastated town.

Aid workers at the scene have reported that hospitals are struggling to cope without enough beds or medicine for the hundreds of victims.

South Korea has promised to deliver emergency aid as quickly as possible as more details of the catastrophe emerge.

Dazed residents picked through the rubble, which stretched for up to 500 metres from the blast site.

Officials said a power line had collapsed, igniting an oil tanker and wagons laden with ammonium nitrate fertiliser.

Aid workers estimate that at least 40% of the town was damaged by the blast.

Residents tried to salvage what they could from the ruins – thousands were left homeless.

This boy is collecting doorknobs found in the ruins.

The damage to the line is a major blow to North Korea, disrupting freight traffic.

The communist state’s media kept North Koreans in the dark about the disaster for two days.

Pictures are from BBC

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Ryongchon in pictures

From Global Security

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Photos are from  Global Security

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More images

Photo from Pinterest

Photo from NK News, picture credit: David Hill

      

Left: Pre-explosion overview of the area of devastion (Source: DigitalGlobe 13 May 2003) Right: Overview of the area of devastion (Source: DigitalGlobe 27 April 2004) 

      \

Left: The Ryongchon Primary School, pre-explosion (Source: DigitalGlobe 13 May 2003)
Right: The Ryongchon Primary School, post-explosion (Source: DigitalGlobe 27 April 2004)

Global Security

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Comparison with Japanese atomic explosions

Hiroshima was a 15 kton (13-18 kton) nuclear detonation; Nagasaki was 20-22 kton. Ryongchon is estimated to be 0.8–1 kton. Pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are from Nuclear Strike 6.

  

Left: Hiroshima. The foreground shows the ruins of the Hiroshima Gas Company Building (800 feet from the hypocenter). In the center are the ruins of the Honkawa Elementary School. [Atomic Archive]  Right: Ryongchon

   

Left: Mitsubishi shipbuilding factory in ruins.  Right: Ryongchon ruins. 

   

Left: Hiroshima.    Right: Ryongchon. 

   

Left: Hiroshima    Right: Ryongchon

  

Left: Nagasaki. Japanese soldiers survey the damage in Nagasaki, two months after the atomic bomb was dropped over the city. (Photo Credit: Corbis) Right: Ryongchon

  

Left: Nagasaki. Damaged School in Nagasaki: August 13, 1945. (Photo Credit: Corbis)    Right: Ryongchon

   

Left: Nagasaki   Right: Ryongchon

  

Left: Hiroshima    Right: Ryongchon

  

Left: Hiroshima    Right: Ryongchon

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Adapted from the English Chosun:

Explosion 3.6 on Richter scale consistent with 800,000 kg bomb

Foreigners from international organizations in Ryongchon to provide foreign aid look down into the crater on April 14. AFP

News report summarized:

Ryongchon Explosion Eight Times as Great as North Claims

May 16, 2004 17:25

– Japan reports that the explosion in Ryongchon Station was 3.6 on the Richter scale.

– This would be equivalent to an explosion of 800 tons of TNT.

– The sources say they got the information from the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization.

– North Korea’s KCNA reported that the explosion was equivalent to 100 tons of TNT. They explained the cause of the accident as  “the electrical contact caused by carelessness during the shunting of wagons loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and tank wagons”.

– The CTBTO said that the explosion’s seismic record had been observed in seismological observation stations in Korea, Japan, the United States and Russia.

– In Japan’ case, stations in Nagano, Oita and Okinawa picked up the Ryongchon blast.

– The CTBTO collected data from various observation posts, analyzed the data at its International Data Center and estimated the size of the blast.

– The CTBT, written in 1996, has to be ratified by all its signatories for it to be effective, but 44 nuclear and potentially-nuclear states like the United States, China, Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea have put off ratifying the document, placing the CTBT on the verge of collapse.

Adapted from English Chosun

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Was this part of Mossad campaign to kill nuclear scientists? Mossad trained to kill Iran’s scientists

  

From: dailymail.co.uk

Mossad training terrorists to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists, U.S. officials claim… but is Israel’s real target Obama? Israel funding dissident People’s Mujahedin of Iran, say officials in Tehran By DAILY MAIL REPORTER UPDATED: 16:50 BST, 10 February 2012 U.S. officials confirmed today that Israel has been funding and training Iranian dissidents to assassinate nuclear scientists involved in Iran’s nuclear program. The claim has already been levelled by the Iranian government who believed that Mossad, Israel’s secret service, have been arming dissidents with the terrorist organisation the People’s Mujahedin of Iran (MEK). Last month Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, 32, a chemistry expert, was killed in a brazen daylight assassination when two assailants on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb to his car in Tehran …. Read more: dailymail.co.uk

From: CBS News

U.S. pushing Israel to stop assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists Recently, as I sought to update a book I co-wrote about the history of Israel’s intelligence agencies, sources close to them revealed that they felt pressure from the Obama Administration – more than a hint – to stop carrying out assassinations inside Iran. Although Israel has never acknowledged it, the country’s famed espionage agency – the Mossad – ran an assassination campaign for several years aimed at Iran’s top nuclear scientists. The purpose was to slow the progress made by Iran, which Israel feels certain is aimed at developing nuclear weapons; and to deter trained and educated Iranians from joining their country’s nuclear program. At least five Iranian scientists were murdered, most of them by bombs planted on their cars as they drove to work in the morning. Remarkably, the Israeli assassins were never caught – obviously having long-established safe houses inside Iran – although several Iranians who may have helped the Mossad were arrested and executed … (cont.) Read more: CBS News

From:  Wikipedia

Assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists Four Iranian nuclear scientists—Masoud Alimohammadi, Majid Shahriari, Darioush Rezaeinejad and Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan—were assassinated between 2010 and 2012. Another scientist, Fereydoon Abbasi, was wounded in an attempted murder. Two of the killings were carried out with magnetic bombs attached to the targets’ cars; Darioush Rezaeinejad was shot dead, and Masoud Alimohammadi was killed in a motorcycle-bomb explosion. The Iranian government accused Israel of complicity in the killings. In 2011 and 2012, Iranian authorities arrested a number of Iranians alleged to have carried out the assassination campaign on behalf of Mossad (the Israeli intelligence service). Western intelligence services and U.S officials reportedly confirmed the Israeli connection. In June 2012, the Iranian government was confident that it had arrested all the assassins … (cont.) Read more: Wikipedia

CNN

Who’s killing Iranian nuclear scientists? Nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan was killed by a blast in Tehran on Wednesday, the state-run IRNA news agency said. It’s a question many people inside Iran — and those who watch the country closely around the world — were asking Wednesday: Who is killing nuclear scientists in Iran? An explosion on Wednesday killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a top official at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, Iranian officials said. He is the third man identified as a nuclear scientist to be killed in Iran in a mysterious explosion in the past two years. A fourth survived an assassination attempt. In each case, someone placed a bomb under the scientist’s car…. (cont.) Read more: CNN

Christian Science Monitor

Covert war against Iran’s nuclear scientists: a widow remembers The wife of the first scientist to be assassinated speaks about her husband’s growing fear of a net closing around him – and of meeting his Israeli-trained assassin before his execution. By Scott Peterson, Staff writer JULY 17, 2014 TEHRAN — There were no signs of trouble the morning of the assassination. Iranian scientist Masoud Alimohammadi and his wife woke before dawn and prayed together. Then she prepared breakfast while he made a list of things to do that day. “He was a very precise person and always wanted everything to go smoothly,” Mansoureh Karami recalls about her husband. That morning Mr. Alimohammadi – a balding man with a thick mustache, close-set eyes, and dozens of published academic papers – said goodbye three times to his wife: when she gave him his packed lunch, as he tightened his shoe laces, and as he got out of his car to close the house’s gate behind him … (cont.) Read more: Christian Science Monitor

Jerusalem Post

ISRAEL BEHIND ASSASSINATIONS OF IRAN NUCLEAR SCIENTISTS, YA’ALON HINTS BYJPOST.COM STAFF AUGUST 7, 2015 18:01 Defense minister gave interview to the German daily ‘Der Spiegel’. A policeman walks past the car belonging to Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan at a blast site outside a university in northern Tehran January 11, 2012. . (photo credit:REUTERS) Israel’s defense minister hinted on Friday that the Jewish state’s intelligence services were behind the rash of killings of Iranian nuclear scientists. In an interview with the German-language Der Spiegel, Moshe Ya’alon said that he bore no responsibility “for the life expectancy of Iranian scientists.”…. (cont.) Read more: Jerusalem Post

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Connection to North Korea-Syria arms cooperation

North Korea and Syria have a political and military alliance

The two nations have been allies since the late 1960s. North Korea fought in two wars that Syria was involved in (1967 and 1973 Arab-Israeli wars), sending pilots to engage in dogfights, military trainers to train pilots, and Arabic-speaking military advisers to advise on logistics and strategy.

Israel has attacked Syria before, destroying a “weapons center”

Operation Orchard (see article below) establishes that Israel is aggressive in striking what it calls military facilities. In this attack, supposedly Syrian and North Korean scientists were killed. There is also Operation Osiris, in which Israel attacked Saddam’s facilities.

Mossad targets nuclear scientists in assassinations

Mossad has a history of killing Iranian nuclear scientists. In the Ryongchon event, Syrian scientists, as well as destruction of weapons cargo, were said to be the targets of the bombing.

Article is from NK News

The violent consequences of the North Korea-Syria arms trade Clandestine cooperation between pariah states has left trail of bodies Nate Thayer June 19th, 2013 WASHINGTON, D.C. – The blast at the al-Safir facility in July 2007, killing Syrians, Iranians and at least three North Korean ballistic missile specialists, is just one occasion in which underover operatives have died working on Damascus’s WMD arsenal. The clandestine weapons collaboration between North Korea and Damascus in recent years has left a trail of bodies from Moscow to the Syrian desert to North Korea in a deadly game of spy versus spy hidden in the shadows of the Middle East. A mysterious blast nine years ago was one of many incidents in which individuals, including North Koreans, have met violent ends cooperating with Syria in developing weapons of mass destruction Photo of crater after explosion, Ryongchon 2004 | Picture credit: David Hill, ECHO SYRIA AND THE RYONGCHON ‘BOMB’ In early 2004, the United States National Security Agency detected a curious, unusually high cluster of sustained electronic communications traffic between a remote location in the northeast Syrian Desert and Pyongyang. The NSA shared the information with Israel’s military signals intelligence and cypher department, Unit 8200, which designated the information for priority monitoring. A few months later, on April 22, 2004, an explosion destroyed a train and decimated the small northwestern North Korean town of Ryongchon as the train headed to the coastal shipping port of Nampo. The explosion, measuring 3.6 on the Richter scale and detected at international earthquake monitoring stations in Russia and the United States, was so devastating that Pyongyang appealed for emergency international humanitarian aid to address the crisis — a highly unusual public action by the secretive regime. The International Committee of the Red Cross was allowed to visit the area and reported more than 160 people killed and 1,300 injured after the blast flattened much of the town, destroying thousands of buildings and leaving a crater 60 meters deep. Pyongyang officially said a train carrying fertilizer containing ammonium nitrate and petroleum accidentally came into contact with electrical wires and exploded, but in the years since a clearer portrait of intrigue suggesting intentional sabotage has emerged. Photo of train after explosion, Ryongchon 2004 | Picture credit: David Hill, ECHO In fact, the train was destroyed by a mobile telephone remote control device activated by unknown persons nearby, intelligence agencies have since concluded. Never acknowledged is that more than a dozen Syrian ballistic missile weapons scientists and technicians employed by the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center, the agency in charge of Syria’s covert weapons of mass destruction development program, were killed in the mysterious blast. The Syrian weapons specialists were accompanying a highly clandestine cargo of missile and other components to the North Korean port of Nampo, destined for Syria’s weapons of mass destruction development program operated by the SSRC. North Korean military wearing chemical hazard protective suits removed debris and the Syrian bodies from the scene. Within days, Syrian military aircraft arrived under the auspices of delivering humanitarian aid to the civilian blast victims, and on May 1 departed with the bodies of the dead Syrian SSRC employees. The bodies of the approximately one dozen dead Syrians were claimed by the SSRC, and the Syrian and North Korean military personnel who transported the bodies to the Syrian aircraft were also wearing hazardous protective suits. Within days, North Korean security officials found a damaged cellphone still wrapped in duct tape near the explosion and abruptly halted the countries entire nascent mobile phone system, confiscating the 10,000 mobile devices in use in the first national cellphone network, established only months before. North Korea did not allow mobile phone use in the country for another five years. In the period after the blast, Israeli and other intelligence services noted more than a dozen trips to Pyongyang by senior officials of the SSRC involved in their missile, chemical warfare and nuclear weapons development program. NUCLEAR COOPERATION While North Korean-Syrian military cooperation was known to Western intelligence services since the 1990s, North Korean-Syrian nuclear cooperation was not clarified until early 2007, only months before an Israeli airstrike destroyed Syria’s nuclear reactor in a remote desert region near al-Kibar in northeast Syria. In the annual CIA briefings to Congress on WMD proliferation, the CIA did not list North Korea as a supplier of nuclear technology between 2001 and 2006. But intelligence had begun to mount since 2001 that nuclear cooperation between North Korea and Syria began “probably as early as 1997.” When Bashar Assad took power in 2000 after his father died, Israel began updating its intelligence file on the young leader. Analysts noted a stream of high-level Syrian and North Korean officials responsible for nuclear weapons development exchanging secret visits. Mounting evidence in the following years included the interception of an unusual amount of electronic communication between a remote Syrian desert location and Pyongyang, numerous reciprocal visits of high level nuclear officials and scientists between Syria and North Korea, North Korean procurement of nuclear technology for Syria, and materials gathered by Israeli intelligence in break-ins to a Syrian official’s London hotel room, where the contents of his computers were seized. This took place in December 2006, when a senior Syrian intelligence official came to London under a false name. Mossad agents broke into his hotel room and copied the contents of his computer. What they found astonished them. There were blueprints of a nuclear facility and scores of photographs of the nuclear plant under construction, apparently in the Syrian Desert. Montage: CIA, modified by NK News One picture was of North Korea’s top nuclear scientist, Chon Chibu, in charge of North Korea’s plutonium nuclear fuel processing site at Yongybon, posing with Syria’s atomic energy agency director, Ibrahim Othman, in Syria. Vehicles in the background clearly showed Syrian license plates. In February of 2007, a senior Iranian general attached to the Republican Guard defected to the west. He proved a goldmine of information. Gen. Ali-Reza Asgari said Iran was financing a nuclear facility in Syria designed and constructed by North Korea. The defection was top secret and Asgari soon disappeared. Iran announced he had been “kidnapped by the Mossad and probably killed.” In fact, Asgari was whisked to a U.S. military base in Germany where he provided key details before being given political asylum. ISRAELI STRIKE In August 2007, Israeli commandos dressed as Syrian soldiers were inserted by helicopter into the remote northeastern Syrian Desert to the nuclear site near the Euphrates River. They collected samples which were brought back to Israel. Tests confirmed not only the presence of nuclear material, but the signature showed that it originated in North Korea. Both Israel and Washington knew that there were North Korean specialists working at the site. “There are North Korean people there. There’s no question about that,” U.S. State Department official Andrew Semmel was quoted as saying in the aftermath of the attack. That September 3, a North Korean ship, the Al Hamed, arrived at the Syrian port of Tartus with a cargo manifest claiming to be carrying cement. An Israeli agent was monitoring the ship and took photographs of the cargo. Israel contends the vessel was delivering key nuclear material for the plutonium weapons plant. Three days later, and two months after the deadly blast at the Aleppo chemical weapons site, eight Israeli F-16 fighter jets mounted the stealth air strike on a top secret plutonium production nuclear weapons facility being built under contract by North Korea near al-Kibar . Ten more North Korean nuclear scientists and technicians were killed in the Israeli assault. The nearly completed North Korean-designed and built nuclear facility was the result of a secret pact signed by senior North Korean government officials with Assad in June 2002. The estimated $2 billion nuclear weapons facility in Syria was partially financed by Iran. North Korea was additionally paid with five annual deliveries of 100,000 tons of Syrian wheat, in a $120 million-deal personally signed by Assad, documents in the Syrian president’s handwriting show. The bodies of the 10 North Korean nuclear advisors killed in the Israeli bombings were returned to North Korea in October. In a secret April 2008 U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks, then U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrote to State Department officials that Israel had destroyed the reactor that “Syria was clandestinely constructing, we judge with North Korean assistance.” Rice spoke of the fear that Washington had of publicizing the information: “We have delayed sharing this information with you, because our first concern was to prevent conflict.” “We believe -– based on strong evidence –- that North Korea assisted Syria with the reactor,” Rice wrote. “The U.S. intelligence community conducted an intensive, months-long effort to confirm and corroborate the information Israel provided us on the reactor and to gather more details from our own sources and methods…our intelligence experts are confident that the facility the Israelis targeted was in fact a nuclear reactor of the same type North Korea built indigenously at its Yongbyon nuclear facility” and “we have good reason to believe this reactor was not intended for peaceful purposes.” OVERCOMING SETBACK Undeterred by either the military strike on the Syrian nuclear facility in September or the July explosions at the chemical weapons facility, North Korea and Syria exchanged high-level weapons delegations for urgent meetings in both September and October. On September 10, 2007, four days after the Israeli bombing of the Syrian facility, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il sent a message to Assad reaffirming that “the excellent friendly and co-operative relations between the two countries are steadily growing stronger even under the complicated international situation.” A more strident message was sent the following day condemning the Israeli air assault as “illegal” and “a very dangerous provocation.” On September 22 2007, a delegation of Syrian diplomats led by leading Ba’ath party figure Saaeed Eleia Dawood, was met by Kim Yong Nam, head of the Supreme People’s Assembly. On September 24 of the same year North Korea’s official party newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, said, “Israeli warplanes’ intrusion into the territorial airspace of Syria and bomb-dropping are an outright violation of Syria’s sovereignty and a grave crime that destroys regional peace and security,” and that the United States supported this “brazen behavior.” In November 2007, North Korean ground-to-ground missile engineers secretly returned to Syria to hold talks on how to resume tests to arm with chemical warheads the ballistic missiles Pyongyang provided to Damascus. The objective was to extend the range and accuracy of Syrian missiles to be able to reach the entirety Israeli territory. North Korea’s connection to Hezbollah, Imad Mughniyah | Picture: Wikipedia ASSASSINATIONS In February 2008, Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyah, who was also Hezbollah’s chief liaison for North Korea, was assassinated in downtown Damascus. Mughniyah had made several trips to Pyongyang and coordinated North Korean assistance to Hezbollah, which included a variety of conventional weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, training by Pyongyang of their guerrilla fighters, and the sophisticated construction of a North Korean-designed and built underground tunnel network in southern Syria along the Lebanese border. Mughniyah was also one of the most-wanted terrorists and bomb-makers in the Middle East, widely recognized as the mastermind of the bombings at the U.S. Marine barracks and embassy in Beirut that killed hundreds of American troops and diplomats in the 1980s. Israeli intelligence had information that Mughniyah was plotting a military attack in retaliation for the Israeli strike against the North Korean-built plutonium weapons facility, according to a detailed report by Der Spiegel in 2009. On the night of February 12, 2008, Imad Mughniyah attended a party at the Iranian embassy in Damascus where other guests included the Hamas leader Khaled Mashal and the Syrian official in charge of coordinating covert weapons projects with Pyongyang, Gen. Mohammed Suleiman. After leaving the reception, Mughniyah was killed when a bomb placed in the headrest of the driver’s seat of his Pajero exploded. Six months later, on August 2, 2008, on the coast near the Syrian city of Tartous, Suleiman was relaxing at his weekend home. Suleiman was Assad’s top military and security aide in charge of Syria’s covert weapons, including their missile, chemical and nuclear weapons-development program. Suleiman was also Damascus’s chief liaison with North Korea. Charged with ensuring the security of the North Korean scientists, military advisors and technicians stationed in and visiting Syria, Suleiman had made numerous trips to North Korea to personally oversee the procurement of nuclear and, chemical weapons, as well as ballistic missile components. Suleiman was in charge of “development of missiles, chemical and biological weapons and nuclear research and development. He coordinated the transfer of the reactor’s parts to Syria and was in charge of security arrangements for the North Korean scientists and technicians involved in its construction,” wrote Michael Bar-Zohar and Nissim Mishal in their 2010 book “Mossad – The Great Operations.” After the Israeli bombing destroyed the plutonium production site, Suleiman began plans to build a replacement nuclear facility, but “Suleiman’s new mission was much more complex and difficult than before, since he was now aware that he was on the Israeli and American intelligence agencies’ radars.” Accounts of what happened next vary depending on what sources are cited, but agree that Suleiman was in his vacation home when assassins’ bullets killed him while he was eating at his dinner table with family and friends. A yacht with Israeli navy scuba divers and snipers was two kilometers off the Syrian coast. According to the London Sunday Times, two scuba divers with guns in water-proof cases swam to shore, identified Suleiman and both fired one shot, hitting the chief of Syria’s missile, chemical and nuclear weapons program in the head. Other reports suggest Israeli snipers firing from the sea vessel. Several days after the killing, Syria’s official media released a short statement: “Syria is holding an investigation to find those responsible for this crime.” Secret U.S. diplomatic documents, released by WikiLeaks, quote U.S. officials saying Syria believed Israel was responsible for the assassination of Suleiman, who “enjoyed a reputation… as having special status and proximity to” Assad. “As in other recent assassinations in Syria, speculation about who could have done it will likely be rampant,” read the classified August 2008 cable from the U.S. embassy in Damascus. “The most obvious suspects are the Israelis.” RUSSIAN CONNECTION In the 1990s, the commander of the Russian Military Academy for Chemical Warfare, Gen. Anatoly Kuntsevich, was also the top adviser on chemical weapons disarmament for then-Russian president Boris Yeltsin. But, as the former Soviet Union disintegrated, Kuntsevich secretly took on lucrative freelancing opportunities on the international chemical weapons black market. In 1993, through a front company Kuntsevich created, he provided Syria 800 kilograms of key chemicals, smuggled from the Russian Military Academy for chemical warfare, to produce a sophisticated version of VX nerve gas which was adapted into chemical warheads. Kuntsevich worked secretly for Damascus in exchange for large amounts of money to build their chemical weapons programs until 2002, when he was said to have died mysteriously on a flight from Damascus to Moscow. But Israeli investigative journalist Ronen Bergman notes that his headstone in a Moscow cemetery lists his date of death as three days before the flight’s departure. His death came after several high level demarches from Israel to the Kremlin to force Kuntsevich to cease his chemical weapons activities went unaddressed. And in 2010, the Russian deputy head of the GRU, the military intelligence agency, died in a purported swimming accident in Damascus. Israeli agents are suspected of being responsible for both deaths. HOME TERRITORY In July 2012, the core leadership of Syria’s military and security services were killed or injured in a bomb attack at the headquarters of the National Security Bureau in Damascus. Asef Shawkat, head of military intelligence; Rajha Daud, Minister of Defence; Hesham Bakhtiar, head of the National Security Service; and Tourkmani Hassan, Chief of Staff, were killed in the blast. What went largely unnoticed was the assassination four days later of Dr. Nabil Zougheib, Syria’s top missile scientist and head of the missile development program for the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center. A trained missile engineer, Brig. Gen. Nabil Zougheib was a frequent visitor to Pyongyang. He had directly supervised North Korean missile engineers weaponizing North Korean supplied ballistic missile with chemical warheads. “We have seen assassinations to people who hold key positions in research programs where the aim was to stop these research programs as with Doctor Nabil Zougheib,” Damascus based Syrian journalist Alaa Ebrahim said in media interviews. Other Syrian scientists assassinated include a nuclear engineer and researcher, Aws Abdel Karim Khalil, and Brigadier General and chemical engineer Naël elDakhil from the Department of Chemical Engineering.” Dr. Ali Mohamad, editor-in-chief of the Syria Tribune, a pro Assad Damascus based media organization, said in a media interview “Let’s remember that the Syrian official who was responsible for all military research projects has been assassinated in Damascus by the rebels,” he said. “Let’s also remember that the person who orchestrated the Syrian long-range missile project colonel Dawoud Rajiha, was also assassinated in Damascus. This is about stopping the Syrian scientific military research projects and is about breaking the link that will help [Israel] overcome the Lebanese resistance and the Palestinians.” They were only the latest in a long list of dead scientists who have worked on Syria’s weapons of mass destruction development program over the last decade. Main picture credit: David Hill, ECHO NK News

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REFERENCE ARTICLES

Below are articles that have been referred to in the above main body of the report and reproduced in their entirety or have been summarized and posted here.

Article is from Global Security:

Ryongchon, DPRK  Train-wreck and Explosion Initial reports indicated that on April 22, 2004, two trains, one carrying petroleum and the other liquefied natural gas, collided near the North Korean town of Ryongchon, ten miles southeast of the Chinese border, causing a massive explosion. Additional information, both from the North Korean government and other sources indicate that the cause of the explosion was not a result of trains carrying fuel, but was instead caused by the detonation of explosives that the trains were carrying. The accident took place hours after the passage of North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il, who was returning from a visit to Beijing. Initial casualty estimates were reported to be in the thousands, with North Korea reported to having declared a state of emergency. United Nations and Red Cross officials reported early on April 23 that at least 54 people were killed and more than 1,200 injured in the disaster, but the toll could ultimately be much higher as over a thousand buildings were completely destroyed and more buildings were seriously damaged. On April 24, 2004, the Korean Central News Agency released an item commenting on the explosion. According to the report, the blast was caused by “the electrical contact caused by carelessness during the shunting of wagons loaded with ammonium nitrate fertilizer and tank wagons”. According to an UN Office For The Coordination Of Humanitarian Affairs Report from 24 April 2004, the explosion resulted from the contact of two train wagons carrying ammonium nitrate with a wagon containing fuel oil. Each wagon contained 40 MT of ammonium nitrate which were enroute to a construction site for the Pakma-cheol san irrigation project. This resulted in a massive explosion creating a large crater and leveling everything in a 500 m radius. As of 24 April 2004, the explosion had injured approximately 1,300 people, 370 of which were hospitalized. 154 bodies had been recovered, including 76 children while five people were reported missing. In addition, 1,850 houses were either destroyed or rendered unsafe due to the explosion. Most of these houses were single story dwellings. An estimated 1,850 families (approximately 8,000 people) have been made homeless by the accident. This represents approximately 40 per cent of the area of the township. Public buildings suffered major damage; 12 were completely destroyed and 10 partially destroyed. Some images of the resulting damage were also released, some of which can be seen here. According to a KCNA release, the radius of the damage caused by the explosion was 2 km, with the most serious damage concentrated within the radius of 1.5 km. The wagon explosion was reported to have made a 15 meter deep crater. Ryongchon County has a population of 123,200 people, of whom 27,000 live in the county city.        Left: Pre-explosion overview of the area of devastion (Source: DigitalGlobe 13 May 2003) Right: Overview of the area of devastion (Source: DigitalGlobe 27 April 2004)         Left: The Ryongchon Primary School, pre-explosion (Source: DigitalGlobe 13 May 2003) Right: The Ryongchon Primary School, post-explosion (Source: DigitalGlobe 27 April 2004) Global Security

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#vialls

Joe Vialls: Ryongchon was a mini-nuke

Article from The Unhive Mind

Ryongchon – Nuclear Trigger for American Conscription? South Korean “official” accurately announced the shocking level of damage only one hour after the blast, long before the North Koreans could even reach Ryongchon’s ground zero Copyright Joe Vialls, 25 April 2004 The Special Atomic Demolition Munition (SADM) is a U.S. Navy and Marines project dating back to the mid sixties, and still operational today with weapons ranging from 10 to 5,000 tons TNT equivalent yield. The backpack nuclear weapon is designed to allow one man to parachute from any type of aircraft carrying the weapon package which is placed in a harbor or other strategic location that can be accessed covertly by sea or by air. Another parachutist without a weapon package follows to provide support. The two-man team places the weapon package in the desired location, arms the radio detonator, then hopefully escapes by waiting submarine. Viewed through the eyes of desperate Zionist neocons like Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld and Sharon, if North Korea could be successfully provoked into action by a small tactical nuclear strike deep inside its own territory, the most likely response would be 5,000 North Korean artillery shells per hour raining down on Seoul, the capital of South Korea. Within days or weeks, the United States of America would once again be obliged to protect South Korea and the rest of the western world from the Communist “Red Menace”, this time artificially reborn as “Axis of Evil” member North Korea. Clearly this new ‘patriotic defensive’ action against Korea would require hundreds of thousands of American conscripts. Although Iraq is where the conscripts are really needed, no sane American would accept the illegal invasion of Iraq as justification for conscription, because all have already worked out that this stupefying atrocity in the Middle East has nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, nothing to do with Saddam Hussein, and absolutely nothing to do with American national security. Trying to enforce conscription today in a visible attempt to obtain the extra 500,000 troops needed to steal Iraq’s oil reserves for the Zionist madmen on Wall Street, would simply result in every campus across America exploding into justifiably violent protests. Because the photographs and other hard evidence in this report completely rule out an “accident” in Ryongchon, we are left with the harsh reality that one of the most important strategic locations in the whole of North Korea was deliberately nuked with a relatively low-yield weapon, by a nation or nations currently unknown. This inevitably draws us to ask who has the opportunity, motive and method for the attack, or, put another way, to ask which nations on earth have the nuclear weapons, stealth delivery systems, and the political need to vaporize more than a thousand North Koreans civilians in a cowardly sneak attack reminiscent of Pearl Harbor. Nowadays there are dozens of nations with declared or undeclared nuclear weapons, but only a handful with long range precision stealth delivery systems, the latter limited to America, Russia, China, France and Great Britain. Of these five possible candidates for the sneak nuclear attack, only America has openly labeled North Korea a member of the mythical “Axis of Evil”, and, equally, warned openly of horrific but unspecified military reprisals if North Korea does not stop supplying missile delivery systems to Iran. Thus before we even take into account America’s current perilous military predicament in Iraq, there is only one candidate out of the five left with the necessary motive for the attack.        Regardless of any future call to arms to block the “Commies” in Korea, rest assured this entire scenario is all about Iraq and its priceless oil reserves. The Zionist Cabal in New York knows perfectly well that unless it can somehow import up to half a million more sacrificial American soldiers into Iraq to ‘secure’ all of that priceless oil, the tottering economies of American and the Jewish State will finally collapse, in turn robbing them of any future prospect of global control, and leaving the cabal and its lackeys vulnerable to an unprecedented furious backlash by the American people. Ominously, as I write this report on 25 April, the Republican Guard has just killed another six American servicemen in Iraq, this time using the relatively new technique of firing 57-mm spin-stabilized rockets from converted taxis and waterborne Zodiac speedboats. This Mach 2 rocket has a deadly flat line-of-sight range of about 5,000 yards, and before the invasion was fitted to every ground attack aircraft and helicopter used by the Iraqi armed forces. Before the Americans arrived the entire arsenal of 40,000 x 57-mm rockets was removed and hidden for a rainy day, and it seems that rainy day has now arrived. During the dual attacks on Tikrit and Basra harbor yesterday, the Republican Guard used four of these weapons to kill six American soldiers and wound thirteen others, which means that on pre-invasion estimates they have only 39,996 of these rockets left. However, by using this weapon for the first time since the invasion started, the Republican Guard is sending a far more chilling message to America and its nervous conscripted ‘allies’ from Britain and Australia. The message is disarmingly simple: It matters not if four-star General John Abizaid lines the highway from Kuwait to Baghdad shoulder-to-shoulder with soldiers ordered to stop the Republican Guard planting culvert bombs designed to blow up American convoys, because the counter-insurgents will simply use 57-mm spin-stabilized rockets fired from 5,000 yards away instead. Without potable water, food and fuel, and with desert temperatures already soaring over 100F, the American invasion army will be beaten primarily by a complete lack of vital supply convoys, leading in turn to broken morale and total psychological defeat. When Marine three-star General James Conway ‘anonymously’ told the New York Times on 22 April that forces under his command could turn the Iraqi city of Fallujah into “a killing field in a couple of days”, he was either drunk or smoking dope. Less than 48 hours earlier General Conway received an intelligence analysis from the DIA that detailed the perilous position of all American forces. Of the total marines deployed in Iraq on 19 April 2004, sixty-percent had been reduced to two hot meals a day, while the remaining forty-percent had been reduced to one hot meal per day. There was no water available for washing, and potable drinking water supplies had reached an all-time low. Forget fuel completely, because there was [and is] barely enough to top up the tanks of a few Humvees. Presumably Conway has a high-ranking friend in the USAF who has offered to turn the city into “a killing field in a couple of days” by using several squadrons of B-52 strategic heavies to carpet-bomb the good citizens of Fallujah into a bloody pulp. If this real possibility brings back unpleasant memories of North Vietnam and Cambodia, it is only because Iraq is already well beyond the Vietnam stage in terms of outright brutality borne of sheer desperation. The situation in southern Iraq near the Kuwaiti border is equally desperate, with more than 2,500 soldiers outside Najaf forced to sleep under their armored vehicles, because the Halliburton civilian drivers are too frightened to deliver tent supplies from nearby Kuwait. The drivers point out reasonably that the Iraqis control all the highways and will kill them if they even try, but this does nothing to help the soldiers baking in 101F heat. Remember, these are the very same soldiers that the New York Times is currently telling you will ‘capture’ Muqtada al-Sadr and ‘destroy’ his million-man Shi’ite Mehdi Army. Perhaps someone out there can tell me how 2,500 desperately tired and thirsty American soldiers, running short of food and almost out of fuel, are going to achieve this New York Times miracle? And as they sit baking in the increasing heat blasted by sandstorms, these demoralized men are obliged to watch on helplessly as Spanish troops drive south on their way home to their families, followed in turn by troops from Honduras, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador and Norway. Soon the American servicemen will be all alone in the hostile Iraqi desert, captive pawns in a giant Zionist chess game. Though this may be the first you have heard of the dire situation in Iraq, remember that the Zionist Cabal, the National Security Council and the White House have known about it for several weeks, certainly long enough to formulate an alternative plan of action, no matter how insane that plan might be. Time is running short and, ultimately, as the Zionist Cabal in New York already knows, it cannot force the military to hold its positions in Iraq forever. General John Abizaid cannot withdraw completely from Iraq without permission from his political masters, but he is the man directly responsible for the welfare and safety of all servicemen within Central Command, which includes Iraq. Dubbed the “Mad Arab” at West Point, Abizaid will certainly hold on as long as he can, but he will certainly not sacrifice 125,000 men under his direct command on the say so of a bunch of ‘suits’ in New York and Washington, D.C. Unless Washington can provide him with more than 100,000 extra men and machinery very quickly, General Abizaid will be forced to roll back his forces very slowly towards the Kuwaiti border, because it is the only sure way to keep them alive. So it was against this backdrop of certain defeat in Iraq in the medium to long term, that the neocons had to devise a giant distraction somewhere else. In other words they had to trigger a large war in another part of the world, in order to initiate conscription in America to “Fight Communism”, which in turn would be used to divert vast quantities of young Americans towards Iraq and the waiting 39,996 x 57-mm spin-stabilized rockets of the highly aggressive Republican Guard and Mehdi Army. Remember once again that the only real Zionist objective is to capture Iraq’s incredibly rich oil reserves, and no Zionist gives a damn how many Americans have to die in securing this objective. A sneak attack on “Axis of Evil” member Iran was completely out of the question, because Russia had prudently located several invincible nuclear-tipped “Sunburn” missiles on Iranian and Syrian soil, and then made it discreetly known through back channels that an attack on either nation would be considered as an attack on itself, resulting in two unstoppable supersonic ground-hugging Sunburns instantly winging their lethal way towards Tel Aviv and Haifa. The Zionists know President Vladimir Putin is very much a man of his word, so a tactical nuclear strike anywhere on Iran would clearly result in two giant smoking holes appearing in the middle of the Jewish State. North Korea was an entirely different matter. Already demonized by New York as a ‘Rogue State’ possibly armed with nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, the lonely Stalinist country was the only viable choice left, but for the sake of appearances the North Koreans had to be goaded into attacking South Korea first, or hundred of thousands of future American conscripts might become more than a little suspicious when their draft papers arrive on the doormat, and arrive they will, irrespective of whether it is Bush or Kerry who are temporary residents at the White House. With all of their tame psychiatrists assuring them that President Kim Jong Il was in fact a “paranoid dictator”, who could be “trusted to attack if suitably provoked”, the neocons laid their devious plans, which promise to be every bit as successful as their attack on Iraq. Obviously Kim had to alive in order to issue the order to attack the south, so the tactical nuke was detonated in the Ryongchon railway marshalling yards, just a few hours after Kim’s armored train passed through on its way back from Beijing to Pyong Yang, loaded down with ‘no strings attached’ Chinese aid money. This event in itself should have been enough to ensure that Kim immediately attacked South Korea, but the American psychiatrists wanted to make absolutely sure the message was received, understood, and acted on promptly, which brings us back to the chosen target. During the ‘United Nations’ Korean War of the fifties, the Ryongchon railway marshalling yards were critically important to the North Koreans, as the primary route for re-supply from its primary backer China. Ryongchon and nearby Sinuiju were subjected to countless bombing raids by the Americans, as were the railway bridges over the Yalu River, and North Korea’s major K-30 airbase, located just a few miles away and responsible for using its Mig-15 fighters to repel American bomber attacks. If Kim Jong Il was in any doubt about the nature of the explosion, this emotionally supercharged ‘psychological flashback’ to the fifties was really shoving it in his face. “The Americans are in front of you in South Korea, and they have just cut off you re-supply from China behind you!” Then just to put the boot in, less than one hour after the massive detonation, a reporter for South Korea’s all-news cable channel, YTN, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press that a South Korean government official [who he declined to identify], had stated the likely total number of dead and injured would be around three thousand, which according to my old nuclear tables is almost exactly correct for a tactical weapon of 2 kilotons detonated in an urban area. As every reader knows, this is the exact figure that was then picked up by rote from New York and published in every Zionist-controlled western newspaper, meaning that until the figure was suddenly and inexplicably reduced from 3,000 to 54 the next day, President Kim Jong Il knew that America already knew the exact magnitude of the blast in Ryongchon, despite no visitors being allowed in the city, and despite all communications from Ryongchon to the outside world being severed completely. The YTN reporter pushed it a bit too far when he later claimed, “Debris from the explosion soared high into the sky and fell on Sinuju,” which is nearly ten miles away. Whether paranoid or not, this accurate reportage of an event that America could not possibly have witnessed, certainly told Kim Jong Il and Chinese Intelligence that South Korea and America must both have been directly involved in the attack. The only reasonable course of action for a “paranoid dictator”, would therefore be to wipe out South Korea and take back the entire peninsula from these Imperial aggressors, who had been goading his country for so many years. The split-second that Kim’s artillery opened fire on Seoul, conscription would be back on the agenda in Washington with a vengeance, vigorously supported by more than 100,000 elderly American veterans from the first Korean War, who could be relied on to urge young Americans to “do their bit for America” and “stem the tide of Communism” by agreeing to be blown face down into a rice paddy, there to lie forever after in a giant puddle of blood. We will probably never know exactly how the tactical nuke was delivered to the Ryongchon railway marshalling yards, though it is OK to ignore the deliberately ‘touched-up’ satellite photographs carried by every Zionist-controlled western newspaper yesterday, urging you to believe that the long train-shaped black smear along the center, was caused by the massive explosion of a train variously rumored to be carrying ammonium nitrate, and/or dynamite, and/or LPG, and/or gasoline. The only photos of any use to you are those on this page showing the 72 foot crater and 20 p.s.i. overpressure blast damage out to 500 yards, sourced directly from the official Chinese News Agency. Using these critical data as direct references, it is obvious that weapon yield exceeded 1,000 tons TNT equivalent, and was possible as high as 5,000 tons. The fact that there is a giant crater tells us that this weapon was detonated underground, because surface weapons cannot dig craters at all, as explained comprehensively and conclusively in “Bali Bomb”, linked at the bottom of this page. On the perfectly reasonably assumption that the weapon was American or Israeli in origin, there are really only two possibilities where delivery is concerned. In the first case, a modern portable backpack nuke could have been infiltrated and positioned in one of the Ryongchon underground caverns, originally used during the first Korean War for the deep storage of ammo. Though entirely possible because of the huge population flow to and fro across the Yalu River, this method might have compromised a modern backpack nuke and its handlers, which could be a very hazardous matter in North Korea. Far more likely would be a nuclear-tipped deep-penetration “bunker busting” missile, capable of diving nearly 100 feet into the ground before detonation, and impossible for the Koreans to detect in advance because of its stealth profile and supersonic speed. When these weapons are used, the blast of the explosion itself ‘swallows’ the mild supersonic bang, which of course is delayed for a second or two until the missile has already impacted. The most likely weapon and delivery system would be the AGM-142A Raptor, launched about 50 miles out over the Yellow Sea by a B2 Stealth Bomber, though there are other possibilities including submarines. Where the Zionist Cabal and American neocon academics got it so terribly wrong, lay in their superimposing known American behavior patterns and likely reactions on Kim Jong Il and his Chinese sponsors in Beijing. If an unknown enemy dropped a tactical nuke on the outskirts of Chicago, for example, it is the American way to strike back immediately, even if the correct target has not been positively identified. This is what happened after the attack on the World Trade center, whereupon, after pausing to catch his breath, George Bush attacked a lonely mountain range in eastern Afghanistan. So why on earth expect the Koreans or the Chinese to do things differently? The reality is that North Korea, and more importantly its sponsor China, have been fighting wars on and off for the last five thousand years using entirely different methods. When the tactical nuke exploded in Ryongchon railway marshalling yards, the first job for Chinese Intelligence was that of working out the most likely attacker, which of course was not a very complex problem. Who apart from America could and would want to nuke a railway marshalling yard in North Korea? Far more important for China, and impacting directly on suggestions later relayed to Kim Jong Il in Pyong Yang, was the question “WHY?”. For thousands of years Chinese fighting doctrine has revolved exclusively around asymmetric [unconventional] warfare, where the name of the game is finding out exactly what your enemy wants you to do, then doing the opposite in order to defeat him. It seems likely that Chinese Intelligence had worked out the “Why?” of this particular American operation at least 24 hours before I started writing the first paragraph of this report, which should come as no great surprise, because they had a very hefty head start on me. As Chinese warfare doctrine requires, a heavy bamboo curtain was then rapidly thrown across the entire disaster area, and the North Koreans started murmuring gently that the blast might have been “an accident”. The bait was offered, Seoul was brightly lit and wide-open to thousands of artillery pieces positioned just north of the demilitarized zone, but then the bait was abruptly refused. It is the Asian way, and that means asymmetric warfare at its very best. The North Koreans will have to bury more than 1,000 of their own dead in Ryongchon, but have probably grimly calculated with the Chinese that, by refusing to take their attacker’s bait, America will in turn pay an even greater price, calculated in body bags being flown back home from Iraq. Before you young Americans rejoice at having avoided conscription, be warned that the Zionist Cabal has one giant trump card left up its sleeve, which under more normal circumstances only madmen would use. If push comes to shove, one day on the not-too-distant future, a lone ‘North Korean Missile’ might arc up into the stratosphere, its apogee carefully tracked and recorded by the radars of every nation bordering the Pacific Ocean. The missile will appear to have been launched from North Korea, and will be tipped with exactly the kind of 25 Kiloton ‘dirty’ atomic warhead the North Koreans are accused of building. While the world holds its collective breath, the warhead will reenter the atmosphere and descend onto an area of significant population density on the American West Coast. Hollywood will be spared because it is the headquarters of Zionist propaganda, and San Diego will be spared because of the U.S. Fleet. My best guess is San Francisco, and then you, my naive young conscript, will finally believe. You will eagerly rally round the flag and demand to be drafted, and your demand will be met. Then in the fullness of time you will travel far away from America, and finally get blown into a pool of your own blood, in a paddy field next to the River Tigris in southern Iraq. Update 7 May 2004 Seoul Promotes Possible ‘North Korean’ Missile Attack on Hawaii Less than one month after I predicted that the Zionist Cabal might launch a ‘false flag’ nuclear attack against the U.S. West Coast in order to trigger American conscription for Iraq, the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo has started highlighting the increasing “threat” posed to the west by North Korea’s long range missiles, “much sooner than South Korean and American military authorities had expected.” Remember that you have already been told by the CIA [without any evidence] that North Korea has built “at least two nuclear weapons”, so what could be more natural than “crazed Dictator” Kim Jong Il deciding to fire one of them at American territory, especially after the railway marshalling yards at Ryongchon were utterly devastated by a tactical nuclear weapon in late April? This is what Chosun Ilbo had to say in its 4 May edition: “North Korea has begun work on deploying intermediate range ballistic missiles (with ranges of 3,000~4,000km) it developed last year, building underground bases at two sites. This is much sooner than South Korean and American military authorities had expected. “A high ranking government source said Tuesday that, ‘North Korea is in the middle of building two underground missile sites in Yangdok County, South Pyongan Province and Sangnam-ni, Hochon County, North Hamgyeong Province. Construction is about 70 to 80 percent complete.’ “The [anonymous] source added, ‘In particular, U.S. spy satellites have discovered about 10 of the newly designed IRBMs and mobile launchers at the two sites between last year and the beginning of this year… We presume these bases to be for a new kind of ballistic missile, not Rodong 1’s or Scud’s.’ “Of the ranges of missiles currently deployed in North Korea, the Rodong 1 has the longest at 1,300 km — capable of hitting most anywhere in Japan. The Taepodong 1, developed in 1998 and with a range of 1,600~2,200 km, has yet to be deployed. “The[anonymous] source said the threat posed by the new missile, which can reach Okinawa, Gwam and the vicinity of Hawaii, is part of the background behind the hastened development by the U.S. of its missile defense plans. The new missile, unlike the Taepodong 1 that is launched from a fixed site, is loaded onto a mobile missile launch vehicle. It is, therefore, highly mobile. “The missile is presumed to be a development on the Soviet SS-N-6 sub-launched ballistic missile; it was originally expected to be revealed during last year’s Sept. 9 Foundation Day parades, but the 10 missiles and five launchers were simply brought to Mirim Airbase — the preparation site for the parades — and not featured in the celebrations. “The missiles are 12 meters long and 1.5 wide — shorter than both the Rodong 1 (15 meters) and Taepodong 1 (23 meters), but have a much longer range and are evaluated as a technically advanced type. “Authorities feel that former Soviet engineers either directly participated in the development of the missile, the program of which began in the early 90s and was first confirmed by South Korean and U.S. intelligence in 2000, or at the very least Russian technology [was] applied.” Within one hour of publication, this obscure South Korean report was displayed prominently on the front page of http://missilethreat.com, itself a sub-division of the American Claremont Institute, which touts its primary skill as, “The Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy”. Hmmm… There is nothing very stately or philosophical about nuking your own country for the ‘greater good’ of Zionism and its lackeys. Especially worrying about the Chosun Ilbo report is its pointed reference to “sub-launched ballistic missile”, which of course is the only method available to America for a ‘false flag’ launch very close to North Korea, thereby creating the illusion that Kim Jong Il has apparently gone nuts, in turn leading to massed American conscription for Iraq. Those who think that, “No U.S. Naval Officer would nuke America” are quite right, but, unfortunately, the American submarine captain will have no idea where the missile is going. Since before Gulf War I, all strategic and cruise missiles have been [and still are] remotely targeted from Washington, D.C., giving rise to considerable concern among ship’s officers, some of whom have commented in the past that they feel “uneasy” about launching strategic weapons without knowing their targets. Update 6 August 2004 Jane’s Defense Subtly ‘Warns’ of Attack on U.S. West Coast Just in case you Americans in the western states have been feeling ‘left out of danger’ by Ridge’s phony warning of attacks on New York, New Jersey and Washington, DC, Jane’s Defense has come to the rescue with a subtle warning designed to chill the blood of those facing the “terrible Commies” across the Pacific in in North Korea, who are apparently making ready to kill and maim you with nuclear and biological weapons. Though many readers may feel the devil is in the detail, and this is just another deflector away from America’s lethal misadventures in Iraq, all would do well to remember that the Zionist Cabal is prepared to sacrifice every last man and woman in the U.S. military to conquer Middle East crude oil, so this latest snippet is not mere flag waving, but calculated propaganda. On 3 August 2004, Reuters quoted Jane’s as follows: “North Korea is deploying new land- and sea-based ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads and may have sufficient range to hit the United States, according to the authoritative Jane’s Defense Weekly. “In an article due to appear Wednesday, Jane’s said the two new systems appeared to be based on a decommissioned Soviet submarine-launched ballistic missile, the R-27. It said communist North Korea had acquired the know-how during the 1990s from Russian missile specialists and by buying 12 former Soviet submarines which had been sold for scrap metal but retained key elements of their missile launch systems.” So it must be those pesky Russians again. Joe McCarthy warned you about them, but you just wouldn’t listen, right? Jane’s, which did not specify its sources, said the sea-based missile was potentially the more threatening of the two new weapons systems. “It would fundamentally alter the missile threat posed by the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and could finally provide its leadership with something that it has long sought to obtain — the ability to directly threaten the continental U.S.” Ian Kemp, news editor of Jane’s Defense Weekly, said North Korea would only spend the money and effort on developing such missiles if it intended to fit them with nuclear warheads. “It’s pretty certain the North Koreans would not be developing these unless they were intended for weapons of mass destruction warheads, and the nuclear warhead is far and away the most potent of those,” he told Reuters. So, if you haven’t dug those nuclear shelters in California and Hawaii yet, best get out the shovels… The Unhive Mind

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Israeli strike on Syrian facilities

Article is from Wikipedia: Operation Orchard

Ryongchon Disaster and Operation Orchard In 2001, the Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence service, was profiling newly inducted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Visits by North Korean dignitaries, which focused on advanced arms deliveries, were noticed. Aman, Israel’s military intelligence department, suggested nuclear arms were being discussed, but the Mossad dismissed this theory. In spring 2004, U.S. intelligence reported multiple communications between Syria and North Korea, and traced the calls to a desert location called al-Kibar. Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence and codebreaking unit, added the location to its watch list.[17] On April 22, 2004, a massive explosion occurred on a North Korean freight train heading for the port of Namp’o. According to British intelligence writer Gordon Thomas, the Mossad had learned that dozens of Syrian nuclear technicians were in a compartment adjoining a sealed wagon. According to Thomas, the Syrians had arrived in North Korea to collect the fissionable material stored in the wagon. All of the technicians were killed in the train explosion. Their bodies were flown to Syria in lead-encased coffins aboard a Syrian military plane. A wide area around the explosion site was cordoned off for days as North Korean soldiers in anti-contamination suits collected wreckage and sprayed the area. Mossad analysts suspected they were trying to recover weapons-grade plutonium. Since the explosion, the Mossad tracked about a dozen trips by Syrian military officers and scientists to Pyongyang, where they met with high-ranking North Korean officials.[18] The Daily Telegraph, citing anonymous sources, reported that in December 2006, a top Syrian official arrived in London under a false name. The Mossad had detected a booking for the official in a London hotel, and dispatched at least ten undercover agents to London. The agents were split into three teams. One group was sent to Heathrow Airport to identify the official as he arrived, a second to book into his hotel, and a third to monitor his movements and visitors. Some of the operatives were from the Kidon Division, which specializes in assassinations, and the Negev Division, which specializes in breaking into homes, embassies, and hotel rooms to install bugging devices. On the first day of his visit, he visited the Syrian embassy and then went shopping. Kidon operatives closely followed him, while Negev operatives broke into his hotel room and found his laptop. A computer expert then installed software that allowed the Mossad to monitor his activities on the computer. When the computer material was examined at Mossad headquarters, officials found blueprints and hundreds of pictures of the Kibar facility in various stages of construction, and correspondence. One photograph showed North Korean nuclear official Chon Chibu meeting with Ibrahim Othman, Syria’s atomic energy agency director. Though the Mossad had originally planned to kill the official in London, it was decided to spare his life following the discovery.[19] Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was notified. The following month, Olmert formed a three-member panel to report on Syria’s nuclear program. Six months later, Brigadier-General Yaakov Amidror, one of the panel’s members, informed Olmert that Syria was working with North Korea and Iran on a nuclear facility. Iran had funneled $1 billion to the project, and planned on using the Kibar facility to replace Iranian facilities if Iran was unable to complete its uranium enrichment program.[17] In July 2007, an explosion occurred in Musalmiya, northern Syria. The official Sana news agency said 15 Syrian military personnel were killed and 50 people were injured. The agency reported only that “very explosive products” blew up after a fire broke out at the facility. The September 26 edition of Jane’s Defence Weekly claimed that the explosion happened during tests to weaponise a Scud-C missile with mustard gas.[20] A senior U.S. official told ABC News that, in early summer 2007, Israel had discovered a suspected Syrian nuclear facility, and that the Mossad then “managed to either co-opt one of the facility’s workers or to insert a spy posing as an employee” at the suspected Syrian nuclear site, and through this was able to get pictures of the target from on the ground.”[21] Two months before the strike, Israel launched the Ofek-7 spy satellite into space. The satellite was geo-positioned to watch activity at the complex.[18] In mid August 2007, Israeli commandos from the Sayeret Matkal reconnaissance unit covertly raided the suspected Syrian nuclear facility and brought nuclear material back to Israel. Two helicopters ferried twelve commandos to the site in order to get photographic evidence and soil samples. The commandos were probably dressed in Syrian uniforms. Although the mission was successful, it had to be aborted earlier than planned after the Israelis were spotted by Syrian soldiers. Soil analysis revealed traces of nuclear activity.[17][22][23] Anonymous sources reported that once material was tested and confirmed to have come from North Korea, the United States approved an Israeli attack on the site.[16] Senior U.S. officials later claimed that they were not involved in or approved the attack, but were informed in advance.[24] In his memoir Decision Points, President George W. Bush wrote that Prime Minister Olmert requested that the U.S. bomb the Syrian site, but Bush refused, saying the intelligence was not definitive on whether the plant was part of a nuclear weapons program. Bush claimed that Olmert did not ask for a green light for an attack and that he did not give one, but that Olmert acted alone and did what he thought was necessary to protect Israel.[25] Another report indicated that Israel planned to attack the site as early as July 14, but some U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, preferred a public condemnation of Syria, thereby delaying the military strike until Israel feared the information would leak to the press.[26] The Sunday Times also reported that the mission was “personally directed” by Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.[16] Three days before the attack, a North Korean cargo ship carrying materials labeled as cement docked in the Syrian port of Tartus.[27] Gordon Thomas wrote that as the ship was being unloaded, a Mossad operative photographed the process with a hidden camera.[18] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Orchard#Pre-strike_activity http://www.rigorousintuition.ca/board2/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=38839

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Article is from News Wire

North Korea’s Train Victims Attract Funds, But Children Starve SEOUL, South Korea, May 6, 2004 (ENS) – People from around the world have rushed to help victims of last month’s train explosion in North Korea, but that concern has not translated into funding for food needed by millions of other North Koreans, a senior United Nations official said today. Donors have committed almost US$30 million for victims of the April 22 blast at Ryongchon near North Korea’s border with China. More than 170 people, including 76 children, died in the explosion caused by a train hitting a power line, and 1,300 were injured, of whom 370 were hospitalized. Nearly 8,000 people were left homeless. Damage caused by the April 22 explosion in Ryongchon (Photo courtesy IFRC) “The speed and scale of the response to appeals for the wounded and homeless of Ryongchon are as heart warming as they are vital,” Tony Banbury, the World Food Programme’s (WFP) director for Asia, told reporters in Seoul, South Korea today. “But we must not forget the broader humanitarian crisis that continues to deprive so many more of a very basic diet, drinkable water and decent healthcare,” he said. Banbury led a WFP mission that delivered the first international assistance to Ryongchon and 360 seriously wounded people at a hospital in the nearby city of Sinuiju on April 25. Today he repeated his agency’s pledge to meet the food needs of all the survivors over the coming months. “We are providing nutritious, easy to eat meals for hospital patients and their families, full rations to those without a roof over their heads, and will help rebuild the devastated township through food-for-work programs,” Banbury said. “We will do so until next autumn’s harvest, and beyond if need be.” Children from a primary school destroyed in the explosion at Ryongchon have been able to start classes again in a nearby secondary school, said UNICEF’s Representative in the country, Pierrette Vu Thi. Still, that does not guarantee them enough to eat. UNICEF has provided therapeutic milk for children in a local kindergarten, but the agency cannot feed all the hungry children. The World Food Programme has been able to raise only US$21 million so far this year for an emergency operation that seeks to feed 6.5 million of North Korea’s hungriest children, women and elderly people in 2004. WFP estimates US$171 million is needed to feed these vulnerable people. Primary school students in class in a Ryongchon secondary school (Photo courtesy UNICEF) The shortfall in contributions has forced WFP to halt vital, supplemental rations to millions of designated recipients for long periods since mid-2002. In February, the agency nearly ran out of cereals, its staple commodity. Recent shipments, including 38,000 metric tons of maize (corn) from the United States, have afforded some relief, the agency said. The impact of the explosion will be felt for months and, in some cases, years to come, officials from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent said last week as it launched a US$ 1.23 million emergency appeal that seeks to address the short-term and longer-term needs of up to 10,000 people for 12 months. The Federation wants to replenish Red Cross relief stocks needed in the emergency phase, meet the household needs of homeless and destitute families for a period of four months, and provide long-term material and medical support for the seriously injured. “The suffering and destitution we are witnessing is not something an emergency relief operation alone can deal with,” said Niels Juel, the Federation’s regional disaster management delegate. “Thousands of people have lost most or all of what they had and they were already struggling. They must be given a chance to recover and that requires sustained assistance.” For now their most urgent needs are food, basic hygiene materials, kitchen equipment, clothing and fuel for cooking. The disruption of the water supply by the explosion must also be addressed, Juel said, and a Red Cross intervention has begun. North Korean triplets sleeping at a government run home in Wonsan city, Kangwon province on April 2, 2004. (Photo courtesy WFP) But even the children not affected by the railway explosion are undernourished and have been for months. For the past six months, tens of thousands of North Korean nursery and kindergarten children have had to make do without enriched vegetable oil – a key promoter of physical and mental growth. The downturn in food donations is eroding recent gains in nutritional standards. A survey by the government, UNICEF and WFP, conducted in late 2002, showed that four out of 10 North Korean children suffered from chronic malnutrition, or stunting, compared to six out of 10 in a 1998 assessment. Urban residents outside the relatively privileged capital, Pyongyang are worst affected by the domestic shortfall. Even in Pyongyang people are heavily reliant on a Public Distribution System providing 300 grams of food a day – less than half a survival ration. Interviews by WFP staff indicate that 70 percent of households dependent on the Public Distribution System are unable to cover their daily calorie requirements. Much of the population is afflicted by critical dietary deficiencies, consuming very little protein, fat and micronutrients. WFP’s operating conditions in North Korea are a persistent concern, Banbury said. “Existing restrictions limit our ability to properly monitor distributions and measure needs. We’ve made progress, especially in the last year or so, but we have some way to go to reach international standards. We will continue to work with the Pyongyang government on this.” Banbury, visiting Seoul to brief officials on his weeklong mission to North Korea in late April, said South Korea remains one of the largest suppliers of aid to the north through the World Food Programme. “While the overall volume of assistance through us has declined significantly, the South Korean government has maintained its commitment at 100,000 tonnes annually in each of the past three years,” he said. “We are deeply grateful for this crucial support.” News Wire

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Article from Joe Quinn

Mossad Psychopaths behind Murder of Hamas Official in Dubai by Joe Quinn, Feb 21, 2010 Above, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh exits the elevator on his floor in the Al-Bustan Rotana hotel, Dubai. Moments later he will be murdered by Mossad agents hiding in his room. Israel is a young nation, yet its intelligence apparatus has a long and sordid history. From staging Muslim terror attacks in Egypt in 1954, to orchestrating ‘Arab’ terrorist hijackings in 1976, to directing ‘al-Qaeda’ terror attacks in 2006, there seems little that the Mossad will not do in an effort to give legitimacy to the Israeli government’s slow genocide of the Palestinian people and bolster the American government’s phony ‘war on terror’. That the Mossad eagerly assassinates all enemies of Israel (real, imagined and fabricated) is generally accepted, if not condoned, but the details of precisely how agents go about their dirty work has remained sketchy to say the least, with the revelations of former agents like Victor Ostrovsky the most reliable reference. The recent murder of Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a Dubai hotel, however, gives a never-before seen inside look at the extent to which the Mossad operates ‘by way of deception’. Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was found dead in his Al-Bustan Rotana hotel room in Dubai by hotel staff on Janurary 20th 2010. Several coroners reports claimed that al-Mabhouh had been tortured and killed either by electrocution to the head, strangulation, poisoning, suffocation or by way of a pill that provoked a heart attack. The unsavory affair developed in the following way: Mahmoud al-Mabhouh arrived in Dubai at 3:15pm on January 19th on some unknown business. The previous night the Mossad assassination squad had arrived from different destinations and settled into their respective hotels. al-Mabhouh was being followed so closely that even as he exited immigration in the airport he was forced to walk around a Mossad assassin with an luggage cart. He checked into his hotel and went out for several hours. At around 8 pm two Mossad agents gained access to his room and prepared themselves. al-Mabhouh arrived back at 8:24 pm and went up to his room. During this time at least 4 different two-person Mossad surveillance teams had been watching his every move, including dressing up as tennis players and riding in the same elevator as him when he initially arrived at the hotel and following him to his car when he left. Throughout, the 11 individuals were in constant communication by way of “special communication devices”. When al-Mabhouh arrived back and went to his room he was followed by two agents (a man and woman) who kept watch in the corridor while their comrades plied their grisly trade. At 8:46 pm the execution team has left the hotel. By 11 pm, less than 20 hours after they had arrived, all were on planes out of the country. Dubai police initially pointed the finger at Israel, which seemed logical given Israel’s historic targeting of Palestinians individually and collectively. It’s interesting to note that it was the Israeli media that first reported on January 31 that this was an Israeli operation, specifically that “a four-person squad of Israeli Shin Bet and Mossad operatives arrived in Dubai on European passports”. This perhaps prompted Dubai’s chief of police to announce on February 5 that Dubai would seek an arrest warrant for Netanyahu himself: Dahi Khalfan Tamim, Dubai’s police chief, claimed that the dead man was killed using methods known to be employed by Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency. He added that Mr Netanyahu would be held personally responsible if Mossad was identified as the culprit. “Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, will be the first to be wanted for justice as he would have been the one who signed the decision to kill al-Mabhouh in Dubai,” Gen Tamim told The National, an English language newspaper in Dubai. “We will issue an arrest warrant against him.” General Tamim next released CCTV footage of the 11 suspects that detailed how, over the course of 20 hours, they went about the job of identifying, following and ultimately murdering al-Mabhouh. With their work done, the Mossad agents left to several different destinations including, Hong Kong, South Africa and Germany. Based on telephone calls that members of the group made while in Dubai, authorities there suspect that Austria was their “command center”. Above, Mossad operatives Eli Cara and Uriel Kelman Within the last few days however, the Dubai authorities released the passport details of the suspects and are now looking for six British citizens, three Irish citizens, one French citizen and one German citizen! It’s hard to know if the Dubai regime is simply unaware of the Mossad’s history of stealing the identities and passports of innocent people, or if they are deliberately attempting to divert attention from the obvious culprits. After all, it was just 6 years ago that Uriel Kelman and Eli Cara were caught by New Zealand police attempting to use the identity of a mute tetraplegic New Zealand man to get a passport for a third Mossad agent, Zev Barkan. And it was just two years before that, in 2004, that the Sydney Morning Herald revealed that the very same Zev Barkan, identified as a “fugitive Israeli Mossad intelligence agent”, had been dealing with Asian criminal gangs to obtain Australian and other passports stolen in Asia. Barkan has been named by New Zealand authorities as the kingpin in a passport scam for which two Israelis with Australian links were jailed for six months last week in Auckland. One of the jailed men, Eli Cara, 50, had his rented home in Turramurra raided by ASIO in March. A short time later, he was arrested in New Zealand. The New Zealand Government has named Barkan, Cara and the other convicted man, Uriel Kelman, as Mossad agents. Barkan fled New Zealand before police swooped. There are unconfirmed reports that Barkan, allegedly using a fraudulent Canadian passport, has since made visits to North Korea. The New Zealand aid worker, who has intelligence connections in Asia, said Barkan was also connected to an Israeli security company operating out of Thailand. “He goes to Laos, Cambodia, Burma and Thailand and deals with gangs who rob tourists of their valuables and passports“, the aid worker said. “Barkan is mostly interested in passports and there have been a number of Australian passports.” Intelligence analysts in New Zealand believe Barkan, a former navy diver in the Israeli Defence Force, was trying to secure a “clean” passport for use in a sensitive Israeli undercover operation in the region, less risky than a forged passport. The Herald has also been told that Barkan had grown up in Washington as Zev Bruckenstein, where his father was director of religious studies at a synagogue. The fact that Mr Barkan and therefore the Mossad, were keen to get ahold of Australian passports in 2004 is very interesting. On Valentine’s day 2005, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was murdered, in all likelihood by the Mossad, in a massive car bomb in downtown Beirut. I wrote about the details of the attack and why the Mossad were the obvious culprits in this editorial. What I was unaware of at the time was that the Lebanese authorities were looking for twelve Australian men in connection with the attack. Or rather, twelve men carrying Australian passports. In 1997 Canada pulled its ambassador from Israel after two Mossad agents were caught using Canadian passports during a failed assassination attempt on Hamas official Khalid Mashaal, a leading Hamas official in Jordan. And then there’s this from 1987, as reported by the New York Times: Britain said today that Israel had admitted using fake British passports, and a newspaper said the documents were intended to help agents of the Israeli secret service attack foes abroad. The Foreign Office said it made a strong protest last October to the Israeli Ambassador, Yehuda Avner, about ”misuse by the Israeli authorities of forged British passports”. It said Israel later apologized and promised not to do it again. The Sunday Times said in a front-page article on February 17th that eight fake British passports intended “for Mossad secret service hit men to attack opponents abroad were discovered by chance last summer in a bag inside a telephone booth in West Germany.” So are we to assume that the Dubai police are incapable of putting these puzzle pieces together? Or is it a case of Israeli government pressure once again forcing justice onto the back burner? There was more than a hint of irony in the Dubai government’s call for Interpol to help to track down the gang of assassins. For it was just a few weeks ago that Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Noble declared passport fraud as ‘the biggest threat facing the world’. “Right now in our database we have over 11 million stolen or lost passports. These passports are being used, fraudulently altered and are being given to terrorists, war criminals, drug traffickers, human traffickers”, he said. Unfortunately, Mr. Noble and Interpol don’t seem to be looking in the right places. In any case, both the British and Irish governments wasted no time in stating that they had no record of passports being issued to the names provided by the Dubai authorities. In short, the passports are faked, as are the names (or most of them) but naturally the pictures on them are the real Mossad operatives. Have a look: Above, Roll of ignominy, from left to right, top to bottom – ‘Evan Dennings’ – ‘Irish’. ‘Gail Folliard’ – ‘Irish’. ‘James Leonard Clarke’ – ‘British’. ‘Jonathan Louis Graham’ – ‘British’. ‘Michael Bodenheimer’ – ‘German’. ‘Paul John Keeley’ – ‘British’. ‘Michael Barney’ – ‘British’. ‘Peter Elvinger’ – ‘French’. ‘Kevin Daveron’ – ‘Irish’. ‘Melvyn Mildiner’ – British’. ‘Stephen Hodes’ – ‘British’. It should be noted that the people above have undoubtedly disguised themselves to some extent. Just imagine all of the above individuals with or without glasses, beards, mustaches, short hair, long hair, differently colored hair, etc., in each case. From the CCTV footage provided by Dubai authorities we can at least be certain the decidedly masculine-looking ‘Gail Folliard’ is wearing a wig. See this link for larger versions of each person. At the time of writing, three people have come forward to cry foul over the use of their names (but not their faces) in the operation – British/Israeli citizens Melvyn Mildiner, Paul Keeley and Michael Barney. All three have been living in Israel for several years. A resident of a town near Jerusalem, Mr. Mildiner insisted he had nothing to do with the assassination and had never been to Dubai. “I woke up this morning to a world of fun”, he said, after newspapers around the world splashed names and photos of the suspects distributed by Dubai. “I am obviously angry, upset and scared – any number of things. And I’m looking into what I can do to try to sort things out and clear my name”, he said in a telephone interview. “I don’t know how this happened or who chose my name or why, but hopefully we’ll find out soon.” Paul Keeley, 42, a builder originally from Kent who has lived on a kibbutz for 15 years, said: “It’s scary when someone steals your identity. I’m in shock and I don’t understand what I am seeing. It doesn’t even look like me.” Michael Barney, 54, from North London but who emigrated to Israel many years ago, said “I’ve just had a quadruple heart bypass, I’m not exactly spy material.” Perhaps the three men should now reconsider their allegiance to the state of Israel. Then again, as members of that increasingly rare breed of person who choose to do ‘aliya’ to Israel, perhaps they are secretly proud that they (or at least their names) were of some use to the Mossad in their duplicitous campaign of phony terrorism and assassination. The three men’s surprise at finding out that they were temporary suspects in a Mossad operation on foreign soil, it is hard not to remember a similar incident about 8 years ago. Remember this line up? In the end, seven of the above alleged ‘9/11 hijackers’ were officially confirmed as being alive and well and innocent of any involvement in the 9/11 attacks, with several of them expressing similar shock and surprise that their names (and in the case of 9/11 their faces too) were used by the 9/11 authors. While the world was being fooled with the greatest fake passport survival story of all time, no one was interested in the story of the group of Israelis doing the happy dance while filming the collapse of the WTC towers. It is certainly interesting therefore to see these same passport shenanigans being employed in the Mossad murder of al-Mabhouh. Is it too much to suggest the possibility of a common source in both operations? The story of the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh by a mysterious ‘hit squad’ is receiving an unusual amount of coverage in the mainstream press. There is however very little, if any, condemnation of the callous, cold-blooded murder of a man whose only real detractors are those who have been waging a war of annihilation against his people for decades. On the contrary, there is a palpable sense of glorification in the press (and in comments left by readers) of the ‘skilled’ way in which the Mossad went about their task. There is a sense of awe or respect for these psychopaths, a perverse respect which is closely tied to the acceptance by so many people in Western nations of wholesale killing of Palestinians and Muslims in general. When we really look at what these deranged individuals did, the meticulousness with which they went about maneuvering another defenseless human being into a position where he could be silently murdered in a hotel room, fully sponsored and supported by major Western governments, in the name of ‘freedom and democracy’, we are left with a lingering and disturbing feeling that, somewhere along the way, we, as a civilization, have taken a seriously wrong turn. We, as a global civilization, appear to have taken a turn, firmly, into a world where psychopathic actions are not only the norm, but the ideal. I leave you to judge for yourself. Below you can view the extensive CCTV footage (with notations) of the movements of the glorious Mossad assassination team. Note, there is no audio. Joe Quinn

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From Korea Times

Bomb in Ryongchon? Posted : 2014-06-01 17:13Updated : 2014-06-01 18:36 By Andrei Lankov This spring marks the 10th anniversary of the Ryongchon disaster — the largest and perhaps the most mysterious disaster in the entire North Korean history. It happened at 1 p.m. on April 22, 2004,when a massive explosion wiped out a railway station in Ryongchon and the surrounding areas of the adjacent town. The force of the explosion was estimated to be equal to 800-1,000 tons of TNT. To use a nuclear analogue, it was a 1-kiloton explosion. The results were spectacular and awful. Initial reports put the numbers killed and wounded in many thousands. Officially, the North Korean media eventually claimed that 154 people were killed and 1,700 were wounded. However, given North Korea’s notorious habit of underreporting casualties from manmade and natural disasters, such figures look quite dubious. All buildings within 1.5 km of the epicenter of the explosion were severely damaged or destroyed completely. The Red Cross later estimated that some 1,800 houses ceased to exist. One of the buildings housed a local primary school, and it is therefore reasonable to assume that many children and teachers suffered as a result of this disaster. The explosion was seen and heard in China, some 15km away. This might be the major reason why the North Korean authorities decided to do what they normally avoid: they reported the incident officially. Indeed, they could not possibly hide it since Ryongchon is located on the major railway line connecting North Korea with the outside world. Travelling foreigners were sure to have seen the massive devastation with their own eyes. North Korea’s agitprop shock brigades took prudential measures: they reported the disaster while emphasizing the heroism and patriotism of the Ryongchon people. As is the norm, we were treated to usual stories of heroic teachers who bravely rescued the portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il while also sparing some time to evacuate children — media reports made sure readers knew what was more important. The explosion was notable for another reason: It occurred on the very day when Marshal Kim Jong-il, having finished a trip to China, passed through Ryongchon in his heavily armed train en route back to Pyongyang. Like his father, Kim Jong-il was afraid of flying and where possible travelled by train. According to the official-version events, the train had passed the station a few hours before the explosion. But this coincidence has made a number of conspiracy theories look highly plausible. Indeed, only such a massive explosion would have sufficed to kill the Dear Leader in his heavily protected carriage. Thus, rumors had it that the entire explosion was essentially an assassination attempt. Such theories cannot be confirmed or denied, and it may never be known whether this was merely a tragic disaster of unusually high proportions or an enormously costly assassination attempt. At any rate, soon after the disaster, the North Korean authorities banned the use of private mobile phones. This decision further fanned speculation. There were speculations that this decision was made after investigators discovered the remains of an explosive device that had triggered the disaster and that a mobile phone had been used to set it off. At the time of writing, such rumors remain unconfirmed, but Kim Jong-il himself believed it to be an assassination attempt (at least, this is what he said to a South Korean businessman years later, with the conversation eventually finding its way to the notorious Wikileaks). At least there is little doubt what actually exploded at the station; it was several carriages of ammonium-nitrate fertilizer. Many readers will be familiar with the so-called “fertilizer bomb,” this disaster perfectly demonstrates why such bombs are so popular among terrorist groups. Indeed, a variant of this kind of bomb was used to blow up federal buildings in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1993. It is unknown, however, what made the ammonium-nitrate fertilizer explode, but the official report published by the North Korean government stated that the explosion was the result of a tragic accident: Allegedly, it was electric wiring that produced dangerous sparks and ignited the substance. The restoration of the town took several years, but now nothing remains to indicate that the great disaster happened. It has also seldom been mentioned since. Indeed, disasters are not supposed to happen in such a perfect country. Thus, even when they are admitted, they are either made heroic tales and/or quietly forgotten. Nonetheless, I still suspect that the Ryongchon story will remain a popular topic among more conspiracy- inclined journalists for a long time. After all, it does indeed look remarkably suspicious. Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. Korea Times

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