Damascus

West, regional allies responsible for Israel aggression against Syria

Rasa - The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates has strongly condemned the recent Israeli missile attack against a military airport near the capital, Damascus, blaming Western countries and their regional allies for the Israeli regime’s continued aggression against the Arab country.

News ID: 426508

Date: 13 January 2017 - 20:54

RNA - The ministry, in two separate letters addressed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and rotating President of the United Nations Security Council Olof Skoog, denounced the fresh Israeli aggression against the Mezzeh Military Airport, less than eight kilometers southwest of Damascus, in the early hours of Friday.

“The new Israeli missile attack on Mezzeh military airport comes within a long series of Israeli attacks since the beginning of the terrorist war on the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of Syria,” the two identical letters said.

They added that the ongoing Syria conflict was “planned by Israeli, French and British intelligence agencies and is being pursued by their agents in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and other countries that want to impose their hegemony on Syria and the [Middle East] region.”

Syrian state-run TV, citing the Syrian Arab Army's High Command, earlier reported that the missiles had been fired from an area close to the Sea of Galilee in the north of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories toward the airport’s compound.

Earlier reports asserted that the projectiles had targeted an arms depot at the military installation. Several loud explosions were reportedly heard in the wake of the attack.

The Syrian army has vowed to take revenge for the "flagrant" attack and "amputate the arms of the perpetrators."

"The Syrian army command and armed forces warn Israel of the repercussions of the flagrant attack and stresses its continued fight against (this) terrorism," it said in a statement.

The Mezzeh airbase reportedly hosts the headquarters of the Air Force Intelligence Directorate.

The development came more than a month after the Israeli military fired missiles from within the occupied Palestinian territory at the same Syrian army airbase outside Damascus.

“At 3:00 a.m., the Israeli enemy fired several surface-to-surface missiles from inside occupied territory,” Syria’s official news agency SANA reported on December 7, 2016. The report said the Israeli missiles set off a blaze at the targeted site.

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