Israel National News reports: “The Syrian military is prepared to use chemical weapons against its own people and is awaiting final orders from President Bashar Al-Assad, U.S. officials told NBC News on Wednesday [December 5, 2012].

The military has loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped onto the Syrian people from dozens of fighter-bombers, the officials told the American network.

As recently as Tuesday, officials had said there was as yet no evidence that the process of mixing the ‘precursor’ chemicals had begun. Reports on Monday indicated that engineers working for the Assad regime have begun combining the two chemical precursors needed to weaponize sarin gas.

But Wednesday, the officials said, the nerve agents were locked and loaded inside the bombs.

The officials stressed that as of now, the sarin bombs hadn’t been loaded onto planes and that Assad hadn’t issued a final order to use them. But if he does, one of the officials said, ‘There’s little the outside world can do to stop it.’…” (Assad, in the name of his religious denomination, the Alawites, has slaughtered 40,000 of his own Muslim brothers who are Shiites. Imagine what might or will happen if he releases his chemical weapons. Soon all hell may break lost and remember this was Rick Warren’s Damascus road experience as he, in his visit to Syria, praised Assad on Arabic Television as the Mideast’s greatest leader. How wrong and compromising can some Christians become – Matthew 24:5, 11, and 26. See the next three reports.)

BBC News reports: “NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen has underlined US President Barack Obama’s warning to the Syrian government not to use chemical weapons against its own people.

At a NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels, Mr. Rasmussen said their use would be ‘completely unacceptable’.

The foreign ministers are expected to approve the deployment of Patriot anti-missile batteries to Turkey.

The move is designed to defend Turkey’s border with Syria.

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Mr. Rasmussen told reporters: ‘The possible use of chemical weapons would be completely unacceptable for the whole international community.

‘If anybody resorts to these terrible weapons, then I would expect an immediate reaction from the international community.’

The meeting of the 28-member Western military alliance’s foreign ministers in Brussels follows a request from Turkey to boost its defences along the border. NATO officials have made clear such a move would be purely defensive.

President Obama has warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad he would face ‘consequences’ if he uses chemical weapons against his people.

‘The world is watching. The use of chemical weapons is and would be totally unacceptable,’ said Mr. Obama in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington…”

BBC News reports: “Activists in Syria say a government jet has dropped a cluster bomb on a playground, leaving 10 children dead.

Video posted on the internet showed children’s bodies on the ground with their mothers grieving over them.

The children were killed when a MiG fighter bombed a playground in the village of Deir al-Asafir, east of Damascus, opposition activists said.

Intensive fighting has continued around the capital. Rebel fighters captured at least part of an airbase.

Further footage of the playground attack showed what appeared to be cluster bomblets on the ground. In one video, two girls could be seen lying dead in a street while another showed a distraught mother standing, apparently inside a clinic, over her daughter’s lifeless body.

In recent months there have been mounting allegations that the Syrian government has resorted to using cluster bombs as the conflict intensifies, although those claims have been denied, the BBC’s Jim Muir in neighbouring Lebanon reports…”

The Fars News Agency reports: “Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister Temir Parras expressed his country’s full support for Syria’s campaign against foreign plots, and condemned the terrorist attacks carried out by the rebel armed groups in the Muslim country.

Syrian Deputy Foreign and Expatriates Minister Fayssal Mikdad discussed with Venezuelan Deputy Foreign Minister Temir Parras the political developments in the Middle East and Latin America, Sana reported.

During the meeting, the two sides described as deep the strategic relations between the two countries and peoples, founded by Leaders of the two countries, Presidents Bashar al-Assad and Hugo Chavez, and expressed satisfaction over the implementation of agreements and programs which were signed in Damascus and Caracas.

The Venezuelan deputy foreign minister expressed his country’s full support for the Syrian leadership and people in the face of the foreign conspiracy which seeks to deviate Syria’s attention from the main conflict in the region, the Arab-Israeli war…”