Netanyahu issues severe warning of further strikes
JERUSALEM — Israel’s prime minister said Sunday his country delivered “severe blows” to Iranian and Syrian forces and pledged to take further action against its adversaries following the most serious Israeli engagement in Syria since the war there erupted almost seven years ago.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s tough words to his Cabinet came a day after Israel carried out a wave of air strikes in Syria. Israel ordered the strikes after it intercepted an Iranian drone that had infiltrated its airspace, and an Israeli F-16 was downed upon its return from Syria.
“Yesterday we dealt severe blows to the Iranian and Syrian forces,” Netanyahu said. “We made it unequivocally clear to everyone that our rules of action have not changed one bit. We will continue to strike at every attempt to strike at us. This has been our policy, and it will remain our policy.”
Israel has tried to stay on the sidelines since civil war broke out in neighboring Syria in 2011, though it has periodically carried out air strikes against suspected weapons shipments believed to be headed for Lebanese Hezbollah, the Iranian and Syrian-allied militant group. But as the Syrian war winds down, Israeli officials have voiced increasing alarm that Iran and its Shiite allies are establishing a permanent presence in Syria that could turn its aim toward Israel.
Israeli leaders said the strikes sent a clear message to Iran.
“We do not just talk, we act,” said Cabinet Minister Yoav Galant. “I think that also the Syrians now understand well that the fact that they are hosting the Iranians on Syrian soil harms them.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria through a network of activists on the ground, said Sunday that at least six Syrian troops and allied militiamen were killed in the strikes.
“They, and we, know what we hit and it will take them some time for them to digest, understand and ask how Israel knew how to hit those sites,” Israel’s Intelligence Minister Israel Katz told the Army Radio station. “These were concealed sites and we have intelligence agencies and the ability to know everything that is going on there.”
In Saturday’s attacks, the Israeli jets came under heavy Syrian antiaircraft fire and the pilots of one of the F-16s had to eject before the plane crashed in northern Israel. One pilot was seriously wounded and the other one lightly.