Sebuah kelompok aktivis HAM Suriah mengatakan, serangan-serangan Israel itu menewaskan sedikitnya 42 tentara Suriah. Perbatasan Israel dengan Suriah dan Lebanon cukup tenang hari Senin (6/5/2013) meskipun pasukan keamanan ketiga negara tersebut berada dalam kondisi sangat waspada, sehari setelah laporan serangan Israel terhadap Suriah.

Sumber-sumber keamanan di Amerika mengatakan, target serangan itu adalah senjata-senjata canggih yang akan dikirim kepada kelompok militan Hezbollah di Lebanon.

Suriah membantah tuduhan itu. Menteri Penerangan Suriah Omran Al Zoubi membacakan sebuah pernyataan setelah sidang kabinet darurat Minggu malam di Damaskus, yang menyebut serangan-serangan Israel itu sebagai tindakan agresi terang-terangan. Menteri Penerangan Suriah Omran Al Zoubi mengatakan, Suriah berhak dan bertanggung jawab melindungi negara dan rakyatnya dari pelanggaran apa pun di dalam atau luar negeri.

Kantor berita Perancis AFP mengutip sumber-sumber pemerintah yang tidak disebutkan di Damaskus hari Senin, yang mengatakan Suriah akan memilih waktu yang tepat untuk membalas dan ini mungkin tidak terjadi dalam waktu dekat.

Ini merupakan serangan kedua yang dilakukan Israel terhadap Suriah dalam tiga hari ini. Salah satu sasaran dilaporkan telah diserang Israel Januari lalu.

Pejabat-pejabat Israel menolak untuk berkomentar secara langsung atas laporan-laporan itu, tetapi Wakil Menteri Luar Negeri Suriah Ze’ev Elkin mengatakan kepada radio Israel bahwa Israel khawatir tentang persenjataan canggih Suriah selagi perang saudara di negara itu memasuki tahun ketiga.

Wakil Menteri Luar Negeri Israel Ze’ev Elkin mengatakan, pejabat-pejabat Israel telah menunjukkan kekhawatiran atas persenjataan yang dikirim Iran atau negara-negara lain ke Suriah. Ia menambahkan, yang sangat mengkhawatirkan pejabat-pejabat Israel itu adalah kemungkinan jatuhnya senjata-senjata ini ke tangan Hezbollah.

Surat kabar Israel Yediot Aharonot hari Senin mengabarkan, Israel telah mengirim sebuah pesan rahasia—lewat saluran-saluran diplomatik—kepada Pemerintah Suriah dengan mengatakan Israel tidak berniat terlibat dalam perang saudara di Suriah.

Seorang anggota parlemen Israel—Tzachi Hanegby—yang dekat dengan Perdana Menteri Benjamin Netanyahu mengatakan, jika ada serangan apa pun dari Israel, serangan itu ditujukan terhadap Hezbollah dan bukan Suriah.

Mantan Duta Besar Israel untuk Amerika, Itamar Rabinovich, yang kini menjadi profesor di Universitas Tel Aviv, mengatakan, perang saudara di Suriah telah menimbulkan dampak pada negara-negara tetangganya yang dibanjiri para pengungsi. Itamar Rabinovich mengatakan, sejauh ini, Israel hanya sedikit terpengaruh oleh perang itu, tetapi ini bisa berubah setiap waktu dan kini semakin mendekati perubahan itu.

Sekutu- sekutu Suriah—Rusia dan China—mengecam serangan tersebut. Sekjen PBB Ban Ki-Moon dan Perancis prihatin konflik Suriah bisa meluas.

Presiden Amerika Barack Obama mengatakan, Israel berhak melindungi dirinya dari pengiriman senjata kepada Hezbollah.

GREENWICH, Conn. — Mago is in the bedroom. You can go in.

The big man lies on a hospital bed with his bare feet scraping its bottom rail. His head is propped on a scarlet pillow, the left temple dented, the right side paralyzed. His dark hair is kept just long enough to conceal the scars.

The occasional sounds he makes are understood only by his wife, but he still has that punctuating left hand. In slow motion, the fingers curl and close. A thumbs-up greeting.

Hello, Mago.

This is Magomed Abdusalamov, 34, also known as the Russian Tyson, also known as Mago. He is a former heavyweight boxer who scored four knockouts and 14 technical knockouts in his first 18 professional fights. He preferred to stand between rounds. Sitting conveyed weakness.

But Mago lost his 19th fight, his big chance, at the packed Theater at Madison Square Garden in November 2013. His 19th decision, and his last.

Now here he is, in a small bedroom in a working-class neighborhood in Greenwich, in a modest house his family rents cheap from a devoted friend. The air-pressure machine for his mattress hums like an expectant crowd.

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Today is like any other day, except for those days when he is hurried in crisis to the hospital. Every three hours during the night, his slight wife, Bakanay, 28, has risen to turn his 6-foot-3 body — 210 pounds of dead weight. It has to be done. Infections of the gaping bedsore above his tailbone have nearly killed him.

Then, with the help of a young caretaker, Baka has gotten two of their daughters off to elementary school and settled down the toddler. Yes, Mago and Baka are blessed with all girls, but they had also hoped for a son someday.

They feed Mago as they clean him; it’s easier that way. For breakfast, which comes with a side of crushed antiseizure pills, he likes oatmeal with a squirt of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. But even oatmeal must be puréed and fed to him by spoon.

He opens his mouth to indicate more, the way a baby does. But his paralysis has made everything a choking hazard. His water needs a stirring of powdered food thickener, and still he chokes — eh-eh-eh — as he tries to cough up what will not go down.

Mago used to drink only water. No alcohol. Not even soda. A sip of juice would be as far as he dared. Now even water betrays him.

With the caretaker’s help, Baka uses a washcloth and soap to clean his body and shampoo his hair. How handsome still, she has thought. Sometimes, in the night, she leaves the bedroom to watch old videos, just to hear again his voice in the fullness of life. She cries, wipes her eyes and returns, feigning happiness. Mago must never see her sad.

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When Baka finishes, Mago is cleanshaven and fresh down to his trimmed and filed toenails. “I want him to look good,” she says.

Theirs was an arranged Muslim marriage in Makhachkala, in the Russian republic of Dagestan. He was 23, she was 18 and their future hinged on boxing. Sometimes they would shadowbox in love, her David to his Goliath. You are so strong, he would tell her.

His father once told him he could either be a bandit or an athlete, but if he chose banditry, “I will kill you.” This paternal advice, Mago later told The Ventura County Reporter, “made it a very easy decision for me.”

Mago won against mediocre competition, in Moscow and Hollywood, Fla., in Las Vegas and Johnstown, Pa. He was knocked down only once, and even then, it surprised more than hurt. He scored a technical knockout in the next round.

It all led up to this: the undercard at the Garden, Mike Perez vs. Magomed Abdusalamov, 10 rounds, on HBO. A win, he believed, would improve his chances of taking on the heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, who sat in the crowd of 4,600 with his fiancée, the actress Hayden Panettiere, watching.

Wearing black-and-red trunks and a green mouth guard, Mago went to work. But in the first round, a hard forearm to his left cheek rocked him. At the bell, he returned to his corner, and this time, he sat down. “I think it’s broken,” he repeatedly said in Russian.

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Maybe at that point, somebody — the referee, the ringside doctors, his handlers — should have stopped the fight, under a guiding principle: better one punch too early than one punch too late. But the bloody trade of blows continued into the seventh, eighth, ninth, a hand and orbital bone broken, his face transforming.

Meanwhile, in the family’s apartment in Miami, Baka forced herself to watch the broadcast. She could see it in his swollen eyes. Something was off.

After the final round, Perez raised his tattooed arms in victory, and Mago wandered off in a fog. He had taken 312 punches in about 40 minutes, for a purse of $40,000.

In the locker room, doctors sutured a cut above Mago’s left eye and tested his cognitive abilities. He did not do well. The ambulance that waits in expectation at every fight was not summoned by boxing officials.

Blood was pooling in Mago’s cranial cavity as he left the Garden. He vomited on the pavement while his handlers flagged a taxi to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. There, doctors induced a coma and removed part of his skull to drain fluids and ease the swelling.

Then came the stroke.

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It is lunchtime now, and the aroma of puréed beef and potatoes lingers. So do the questions.

How will Mago and Baka pay the $2 million in medical bills they owe? What if their friend can no longer offer them this home? Will they win their lawsuits against the five ringside doctors, the referee, and a New York State boxing inspector? What about Mago’s future care?

Most of all: Is this it?

A napkin rests on Mago’s chest. As another spoonful of mush approaches, he opens his mouth, half-swallows, chokes, and coughs until it clears. Eh-eh-eh. Sometimes he turns bluish, but Baka never shows fear. Always happy for Mago.

Some days he is wheeled out for physical therapy or speech therapy. Today, two massage therapists come to knead his half-limp body like a pair of skilled corner men.

Soon, Mago will doze. Then his three daughters, ages 2, 6 and 9, will descend upon him to talk of their day. Not long ago, the oldest lugged his championship belt to school for a proud show-and-tell moment. Her classmates were amazed at the weight of it.

Then, tonight, there will be more puréed food and pulverized medication, more coughing, and more tender care from his wife, before sleep comes.

Goodbye, Mago.

He half-smiles, raises his one good hand, and forms a fist.