The Syrian foreign minister has sternly warned that ‘Israel’ is “playing with fire” after the regime conducted airstrikes near the capital, Damascus, and on Aleppo’s international airport.
Faisal Mikdad made the harsh warning in a tweet on the Syrian foreign ministry’s account on Thursday, saying the Israeli regime was risking a wider military conflict and that Damascus would not remain silent in the face of Tel Aviv’s aggression.
“Israel is playing with fire and is putting the regional military and security situations at risk of an explosion,” Syria’s official news agency SANA quoted Mikdad as saying. “Syria will not remain silent regarding the repeated Israeli attacks and the Israelis will pay the price sooner or later.”
The top Syrian diplomat underlined that the US and Western governments should be held responsible for encouraging Israel to increase its aggression and threaten peace and security in the region and across the world.
SANA reported late on Wednesday that the Syrian army’s air defenses had confronted an Israeli missile attack on some posts in the Damascus countryside, shooting down a number of them. Israel also targeted Aleppo International Airport with airstrikes which caused material damage.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based so-called monitor, said four Israeli missiles had targeted the runway and depots at the airport.
Also on Thursday, the Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry called on the United Nations Security Council and UN Secretariat to condemn the Israeli attacks on the country’s territory as a violation of sovereignty and a direct threat to regional and international peace and security.
“Syria draws the attention of the General Secretariat to the fact that this is not the first time the Israeli occupation forces have targeted public commercial and civil facilities or air and sea ports in Syria, endangering navigation, commercial and civil air and sea transport, as well as the lives and safety of civilians,” the ministry said in a statement.
The statement underscored that the Israeli occupation deliberately targets Syrian airports and civilian aircraft in Syria’s airspace.
“Syria preserves its full rights in holding the Israeli occupation accountable legally, morally, politically and financially for deliberately targeting the international airports of Damascus and Aleppo and causing all that sabotage and destruction,” it added.
Syria and the Israeli regime are technically at war due to the latter’s 1967-to-present occupation of the Arab country’s Golan Heights. Israel maintains a significant military presence in the territory, which it uses as one of its launching pads for attacks against the Syrian soil.
The regime’s attacks on Syria started to grow significantly in scale and frequency after 2011 when the Arab country found itself in the grips of foreign-backed militancy and terrorism.
The Wednesday attack was the second one by the Tel Aviv regime to target the Arab country’s airports.
On June 10, the occupying regime attacked the Damascus International Airport, causing the airport to go completely out of service for a period of two weeks.
Syria called on the United Nations and the world body’s Security Council at the time to condemn in clear and explicit terms the Israeli regime’s recurrent and often deadly acts of aggression against the country’s territory.
Source: Agencies (edited by Al-Manar English Website)
