News / Syria

Russia slams Israel’s Syria strikes as ‘very wrong’

Wednesday, 20 November 2019 10:24 AM [ Last Update: Wednesday, 20 November 2019 10:30 AM ]

The handout picture released by Syria's official SANA news agency on November 20, 2019 shows shattered glass scattered at the entrance of a building in the suburb of Qudsaya, west of Damascus, which was caused by an Israeli airstrike. (via AFP)

Russia has denounced Israel’s latest aerial assaults on Syria as a “wrong” move that will exacerbate tensions.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said on Wednesday that his country had contacted its allies about the Israeli attacks in Damascus suburbs.

“We will look into the circumstances. All this is very wrong,” he said. “It merely causes an unnecessary escalation of tensions.”

At the request of Damascus, Russia, along with Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah resistance movement, has been assisting Syrian armed forces in their battles against terrorist groups in the Arab country, many of which have the support of the Israeli regime.

Israeli warplanes fired several missiles from the direction of both the occupied Golan Heights, and Marjaayoun area in Lebanon targeting the outskirts of Damascus in the early hours of Wednesday, Syria’s official SANA news agency reported.

It also quoted a military source as saying that Syrian air defenses had managed to foil the aggression by intercepting the “hostile missiles” and downing most of them before they reached their targets.

SANA further reported that the strikes had killed two civilians in the town of Saasaa, southwest of Damascus, and injured several others, including a girl in a residential building in the suburb of Qudsaya, west of the Syrian capital.

Syria repels Israeli raid, intercepts ‘hostile missiles’ over Damascus: SANA

The Syrian military says the country

However, the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 11, adding that the Mezzeh airbase, in western Damascus, was among the targets of the Israeli air raids.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military confirmed it had attacked dozens of targets inside Syria, which it claimed belonged to the Syrian army and the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), which runs a military advisory mission in Syria.

It further claimed that the strikes came in response to a rocket attack on the northern parts of the Israeli-occupied territories on Tuesday.

Israel frequently attacks military targets inside Syria in what is considered as an attempt to prop up foreign-backed Takfiri terrorist groups that have been suffering heavy defeats against Syrian government forces.

The Damascus government has several times complained to the UN about Israel’s illegal strikes on Syria.

Iran has no yet reacted to the Israeli regime’s new claims.

Last year, similar Israeli raids led to the downing of Russian aircraft off a Syrian coast, killing over a dozen Russian servicemen and sparking some of the worst tensions in Moscow-Tel Aviv ties.

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