Israeli air strikes hit Damascus, says Syria
Damascus, Jan. 9: The Israeli Army carried out air strikes and fired rockets at targets in Syria overnight, causing damage near a military position, the Syrian Army said Tuesday.
Israel’s military has carried out several attacks on the Syrian Army and its ally Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah since the start of the conflict in Syria in 2011.
The Israeli air force conducted strikes on the Qutayfeh area northeast of Damascus, causing the Syrian army to retaliate and “hit one of its planes”, the Syrian army said in a statement.
Syrian air defences intercepted one rocket, but several more hit “near a military position, causing material damage,” it added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain- based war monitor, said the air strikes targeted Syrian Army and Hezbollah weapon depots.
The strikes sparked “successive explosions and fires, causing material damage” in the depots, where land- to- land missiles have been stored among other weapons, the Observatory said.
The Syrian army also said Israel launched land-to-land missiles into Syria from the Israeli- occupied Golan Heights, but it intercepted them.
In a letter to the United Nations, Syria’s foreign minister called on the UN Security Council to “condemn these blatant Israeli aggressions... and to adopt firm and immediate measures to put an end to them,” official news said.
Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 War.
Regime forces are striking moderate opposition with the pretext of fighting against Al- Nusra ( Front). This attitude would scupper the political solution process — Mevlut Cavusoglu , Turkish foreign minister