The Assad regime claims attacks on Iranian bases Sunday night amount to Israeli “state terrorism.”
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
Syria filed a formal complaint Tuesday at the United Nations Security Council over Israel’s alleged airstrikes in the country Sunday night, according to the state-run SANA news agency.
In its complaint, Syria called the Israeli actions “dangerous and hostile,” adding that it blamed the United States for enabling the strikes by supporting the Jewish state.
“Israeli authorities are increasingly practicing state terrorism,” its foreign ministry said in a statement to SANA. “The latest heinous Israeli aggression falls within the framework of ongoing Israeli attempts to prolong the crisis in Syria.”
In line with its usual practice, Israel has not commented on the airstrikes, although Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said on numerous occasions that his country will not allow Iran to entrench itself in Syria and that Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes there in line with that policy.
Syrian reporters were the first to blame Jerusalem for the series of bombings, which took place in Homs, on the outskirts of Damascus and on the Syrian-Lebanese border. The targets included several Hezbollah sites and Iranian-linked bases such as the headquarters of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ 91st Brigade. Regime institutions were also hit, including a scientific research center that Israel claims is involved in developing missile guidance systems for Hezbollah.
Several of the sites have allegedly been hit by Israel in the past as well.
Syrian television showed anti-aircraft fire being directed skyward and reported explosions on the ground as a result of the alleged Israeli missiles hitting munitions storehouses.
Channel 13 News reported that at least the debris of one anti-aircraft rocket fell a long way from its target. It showed a clip from Cypriot television of pictures of the wreckage of a Russian-made rocket that had landed in the northern part of the country, near Nicosia.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that at least 15 people were killed in the strikes, most of them Hezbollah fighters and Iranian soldiers. It also said that six civilians were killed, including three children.
It is not yet known if any of those killed were hit accidentally by wreckage from the Syrian counter-fire.