Syrian official threatens to respond to alleged Israeli strike

A Syrian official said Syria would “continue to destroy the enemy’s collaborators.” 

A senior Syrian official threatened a military response to an alleged Israeli strike on a Hezbollah-operated weapons hub near the Damascus airport on Thursday.

“The Syrian army and its allies will work to thwart the new Israeli plot on the occupied Golan border and will continue to destroy the enemy’s collaborators,” an anonymous Syrian military source told the Lebanese news site el-Nashra.

Responding to the strike, the Syrian Arab News Agency claimed “Israeli aggression comes as a desperate attempt to raise the collapsed morale of terrorist groups due to the Syrian army’s blows and this aggression will not dissuade the army from continuing the war against terrorism and crushing it.”

Israel has officially remained silent on the strike as it has done in previous alleged strikes in Syria. Nevertheless, Israeli Minister of Intelligence Yisrael Katz, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party said to Israel Army Radio that reports of an Israeli strike in Syria are in line with Israel’s policy of attacking weapons shipments meant for Hezbollah.

Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman confirmed earlier this year that Israel had previously conducted various operations in Syria, though he did not specify when, explaining that Israel is “trying to prevent the smuggling of advanced weapons, military equipment and weapons of mass destruction from Syria to Hezbollah” and “working, first and foremost, to defend the safety of our citizens and to protect our sovereignty.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last month that Israel would continue to preclude such shipments from going through.

“When we identify attempts to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah and we have intelligence and it is operationally possible, we will act to stop it,” said Netanyahu.

By: Jonathan Benedek, World Israel News

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