Syria Fires Scud Missiles, Burning Bombs and Even Sea Mines at Rebels

The Syrian regime isn't using its chemical arsenal on its opposition, at least not yet. But it's starting to look like Bashar Assad is throwing everything else he has against the rebels, from Scud missiles to incendiary weapons. He's even chucking naval mines onto dry land to attack his foes.

Hours after announcing it will recognize a revamped Syrian opposition coalition as a revolutionary government, the Obama administration said it had indications that regime forces have recently fired at least six Scud ballistic missiles at rebel positions in the north. Countries typically fire Scuds at their foreign enemies, like Saddam Hussein did to Israel in 1991, not their own populations. (Moammar Gadhafi provides a recent exception to that rule.) NATO, for instance, recently delivered a Patriot missile battery to Turkey out of fear that Assad would turn his Scuds against the Turks.

But to the Assad regime, northern Syria practically is a foreign country these days. It's controlled by the rebels. And those rebels have advanced surface-to-air missiles that can take down regime planes. It's not hard to see why Assad's commanders might elect to fire off a few Scuds instead ' especially as the rebels continue to make advances on key regime facilities.

Robert Farley, a professor at the University of Kentucky, said the use of the Scuds most likely indicated an attempt to strike deep inside rebel-held territory, since they have a longer range than Assad's artillery. They probably also indicate that Assad is freaked out about the rebels' potential to shoot down his planes and helicopters with shoulder-fired missiles. 'A typical fighter bomber can deliver a lot more ordnance, probably with more accuracy,' Farley tells Danger Room. 'You use these for surprise, or because you're concerned about enemy air defenses.'

According to Jane's Defence Weekly, Assad has three varieties of Scuds, capable of striking targets up to about 435 miles away. But Scuds also have a psychological dimension: They're capable of carrying chemical warheads. Farley cautions that Assad can only bluff so much ' each Scud that doesn't come equipped with a Sarin gas shell may diminish the fear that the next one will ' but that's an easier assessment to make when the Scuds aren't crashing down on your neighborhood. As a psychological weapon, even a conventional Scud is a formidable thing, especially because they're not particularly accurate weapons. They could hit anywhere.

But Assad isn't just firing Scuds at his adversaries. According to Human Rights Watch, Assad is also firing so-called incendiary weapons ' munitions filled with flammable agents that cause severe burns ' at civilian areas. Napalm, white phosphorus and thermite can all be counted as incendiaries, but it's not clear to Human Rights Watch what sort of incendiary Assad loyalists are using. Its best guess is thermite, contained within Soviet-era ZAB-series bombs dropped from aircraft. (Assad, in those areas at least, appears to be less concerned about aircraft shoot-downs.)

'The bombs hit a school called 'Ghaleb Radi' Al Rifiat and several residential buildings next to it,' someone Human Rights Watch identifies as a 'local activist' in Quseir, Syria, told the organization. 'The bombs ' caught fire as they were going down from the MiG warplane. I heard a big explosion and several smaller ones. We saw smoke in the air and when we arrived to the Al Rifiyat street I saw at least nine houses on fire.'

Incendiaries are sometimes mistaken for chemical weapons, but they don't kill through toxicity, as sarin, VX and other chemical agents do. They are hard to avoid in a barrage: an RBK-250 ZAB-2.5 bomb of the sort Human Rights Watch reports Assad uses, releases '48 incendiary ZAB 2.5 submunitions over an area the size of a football field.'

The Obama administration told The New York Times that Assad's use of the Scuds indicates his desperation. Perhaps that's true: Elliot Higgins, who has been tracking the arsenals of both sides of the 20-month Syrian civil war, observes that Assad's aircraft are dropping naval mines as if they're bombs ' except without any kind of guidance system or even tail fin that guides a bomb to its intended target, indicating that accuracy isn't exactly a big concern for Assad. But the Scuds, incendiaries and mines might simply reinforce that Assad is an inventive killer who doesn't mind using the munitions he's got to eliminate his foes.