Netanyahu confirms: Israel bombed Iranian targets in Syria

January 13, 2019 by Aryeh Savir - TPS
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday confirmed reports that Israel has been striking Iranian targets inside Syria.

File photo: IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkott and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrive to a press conference at the Kirya government headquarters in Tel Aviv, on December 4, 2018. Photo by Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90

Speaking at the beginning of the weekly Cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu said that “in the last 36 hours alone the air force attacked Iranian warehouses with Iranian weapons at the Damascus International Airport.”

“The mass of recent attacks proves that we are more determined than ever to act against Iran in Syria, just as we promised,” he added.

Netanyahu’s surprising admission of Israeli strikes inside Syria is rare, but not the first.

His comments came after outgoing Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot told the New York Times last week that in 2018 alone, the Israeli Air Force dropped a “staggering” 2,000 bombs on targets in Syria.

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that Israeli fighter jets carried out a strike against several targets in the Damascus area, after entering Syria from the Galilee on Friday night.

After the incident, reports said that a warehouse in the Damascus International Airport was targeted and destroyed in the strike.

The last airstrike in Syria attributed by foreign sources to Israel took place two weeks ago when IAF fighters struck several Iranian targets near Damascus.

The Syrian Foreign and Ministry on Saturday stated that “the Israeli aggression on the Syrian territories comes as part of the ongoing Israeli attempts to prolong the crisis in Syria and the terrorist war, demanding the Security Council to take prompt action to prevent the recurrence of such attacks.”

“These cowardly and provocative Israeli attempts will not dissuade Syria from confronting whoever tries to attack the Syrian people and sovereignty or affects its determination to restore the occupied Syrian Golan,” the ministry stated.

Iran’s military build-up in Syria remains a red line for Israel, which has carried out hundreds of attacks to thwart the Iranian entrenchment in the war-torn country.

Iran uses its positions in Syria to transfer weapons and infrastructure to its terror proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah, while attempting to establish another military front against Israel from the Syrian Golan Heights.

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