Syria's military has moved its aircraft from a base targeted by the United States two weeks ago to an air base in the port city of Latakia used by Russia's military, according to a U.S. official. Most of Syria's operational fixed-wing military aircraft have been moved to the base, ABC News reported. The tactical move to the base Russia uses for its fixed-wing aircraft missions inside the war-torn country is likely aimed at protecting the planes from additional American strikes, since Russian aircraft will be nearby. The move comes as Israeli defense officials on Wednesday said Syria still has up to three tons of chemical weapons. This was the first specific intelligence assessment of President Bashar Assad's weapons capabilities since the deadly chemical attack earlier this month. The estimate came as the head of the international chemical weapons watchdog said laboratory tests had provided "incontrovertible" evidence that victims and survivors of the April 4 attack in northern Syria were exposed to sarin nerve gas or a similar banned toxin. Israel, along with the United States and much of the international community, has accused Assad's forces of carrying out the attack that killed at least 90 people, including dozens of children. French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said French intelligence services would provide proof of that in the coming days. A senior Israeli military official said Israeli intelligence believes Syrian military commanders ordered the attack, with Assad's knowledge. He said it was unclear whether the Russians had authorized the use of sarin or even had knowledge of the attack at the time. Briefing reporters, he said Israel estimates Assad still has "between one and three tons" of chemical weapons. The assessment was confirmed by two other Israeli defense officials. All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity under military briefing rules. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman told Israel's Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on April 6 that he was "100% certain" that the attack was "directly ordered and planned by Assad." Assad has strongly denied he was behind the attack in the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhoun in Syria's northern Idlib province, and has accused the opposition of trying to frame his government. Top Assad ally Russia has asserted a Syrian government airstrike hit a rebel chemical weapons factory, causing the disaster. In response to the April 4 attack, the United States fired 59 missiles at a Syrian air base it said was the launching pad for the attack. According to the official, the Americans alerted Israel of the attack two hours in advance in a telephone call with IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot and Military Secretary Brig. Gen. Eliezer Toledano. The Syrian government has been locked in a six-year civil war against an array of opposition forces. The fighting has killed an estimated 400,000 people and displaced half of Syria's population. Israel has largely stayed out of the fighting, though it has carried out a number of airstrikes on suspected Iranian weapons shipments bound for Hezbollah. When asked whether Israel should have taken action following the chemical weapons attack in Syria, the official replied that since world powers are already active in that country, Israel should avoid getting involved. He said, "We can present intelligence, and we do, and of course, we provide humanitarian aid." Following Russia's intervention in September 2015, Israel and Moscow opened a hotline to coordinate military activity in Syria. Lieberman will fly to Moscow next week for talks with senior Russian officials. Syria agreed to give up its chemical weapons arsenal to avert U.S. strikes following a chemical weapons attack in opposition-held suburbs of Damascus in August 2013 that killed hundreds of people and sparked worldwide outrage. Ahead of that agreement, Assad's government disclosed it had some 1,300 tons of chemical weapons, including sarin, VX nerve agent and mustard gas. The entire stockpile was said to have been dismantled and shipped out under international supervision in 2014 and destroyed. But doubts began to emerge soon afterward that not all such armaments or production facilities were declared and destroyed. There is also evidence that the Islamic State group and other insurgents have acquired chemical weapons. Dan Kaszeta, a U.K.-based chemical weapons expert, said the Israeli estimate appeared to be conservative, but nonetheless was enough to be highly lethal. "One ton of sarin could easily be used to perpetrate an attack on the scale of the 2013 attack. It could also be used for roughly 10 attacks of a similar size to the recent Khan Sheikhoun attack," he said. A fact-finding mission from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, an international watchdog, is investigating the April 4 incident and on Wednesday its director general, Ahmet Uzumcu, said that the results "from four OPCW designated laboratories indicate exposure to sarin or a sarin-like substance." He said in a statement that further results would follow, but that "the analytical results already obtained are incontrovertible." The agency, based in The Hague, Netherlands is expected to issue a report within two weeks. The findings supported earlier testing by Turkish and British laboratories. Earlier this week, Assad's former chemical weapons research chief told Britain's The Telegraph newspaper that Syria had "at least 2,000 tons" of chemical weapons before the war and only declared 1,300. Former Brig. Gen. Zaher al-Sakat said the Syrian government still possessed hundreds of tons of chemical weapons.
