population. are you surprised to hear that damascus at least from this initial report might be one of the targets? would you have expected the targeting here to be more far-flung military locations? well, if the objective is to knock out some of their capability, either their stores of chemicals, which i don t think we re interested in doing that because it would just disperse them and that would be much more dangerous to the population, or to their delivery means, which are typically helicopters, you might expect there to be helicopter locations, bases near populated areas and particularly around damascus. my guess is they re attacking delivery means rather than the stores themselves. and we have a pretty good way of tracking exactly where the assets are. meanwhile, in the interim when we first started talking about the fact that we were going to attack, when the president says well, the missiles are coming is and so on, the russians have been moving their assets
using chemical weapons against its own people again. but when you start launching kinetic strikes inside a place as complicated as syria is right now, you are potentially engaging russian targets, iranian targets, turkish targets aimel molhedin has been reporting initial reports we got from reuters that explosions had been heard on the eastern side of damascus. richard reported moments ago, richard engel reported that two locations were known were thought to have been hit on the outskirts of damascus. we are getting piece by piece information. kyle perry is nbc global editor of digital content. cal is just off the phone, with
starting to get initial information is that reuters has just exploded that explosions have been heard on the east side of damascus, capital city in syria. do we know anything about efforts to target populated areas versus non-populated areas, targeting specifically military infrastructure versus the kinds of chemical infrastructure you were describing that might conceivably be moved in among urban populations? so all we can really point to is what we ve seen in the past. and what i know, you know, from years of covering the u.s. military, i can tell you historically what we usually see is the reason they ll take strikes in the middle of the night is they re trying to limit the casualties. they re trying to limit certainly civilian casualties. but when they re taking strikes on infrastructure in the middle of the night, that is generally because that s a time when there aren t going to be a lot of people around. so let s say, for instance, if they were to strike some sort of syrian mi
including aircraft to safe locations and my guess one of the reasons we ve waited is so that the russians would have an opportunity to move their stuff away. but probably air bases near damascus and helicopters in particular. when the president used the word sustained to talk about this response, did that say anything to you about the scope of this campaign or how long it might last? yeah, we ve been talking about that for some time in discussions with other people who ve been looking at it come to the same conclusion. you remember back in april when we launched the attacks with the 59 cruise missiles, that was a one-shot deal. it was pretty much toward one target. and trump telegraphed what he was going to do a couple of days ago when he was discussing it in public. what you re probably going to have here are several days worth of attacks and multiple targets that we ve picked out that the defense department has
indeed, one trusted source has told me that this is the largest ever series of air strikes on damascus. those three targets are a research center north of damascus. it s thought it is a place where chemical weapons and nonconventional weapons and missiles are developed, and indeed it is hit by the israeli air force earlier this year and on at least one other occasion. a second target east of damascus is the damare air base, why that s significant is it s thought that was the air base from which the helicopters took off last weekend to drop the chemical weapons on douma. the third target, this is backed up by what i m seeing on social media, some people posting videos, some people posting audio of syrian air defenses