Thursday, August 1, 2019

Israeli Rocket Hits Southern Syria, Netanyahu Appears To Confirm As Israel Expands Operations Into Iraq


Israeli rocket hits southern Syria: Damascus



An Israeli rocket hit southern Syria on Thursday, without causing any casualties, Syrian state media said.
The rocket fell in the Tel Bariqa area in Quneitra province, near the border with Israel, state news agency SANA said on its Telegram channel, without providing additional details.
A spokesperson for the Israeli army said it does not comment on foreign reports. 
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said regime loyalists are present in the area targeted by Thursday's rocket attack. 
It did not report any casualties. 
The Syrian province of Quneitra includes the Golan Heights, most of which is occupied and annexed by Israel.
Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria, most of them against what it says are Iranian and Hezbollah targets.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shiite group that supports Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, who is also backed by Tehran.
Israel says it is determined to prevent its arch-foe Iran from entrenching itself militarily in Syria, where Tehran backs Assad's regime.
The Jewish state insists that it has the right to continue to target positions held by Iran and its ally Hezbollah out of self-defence.
The Syrian conflict has killed more than 370,000 people and drawn in world powers since it started with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011.








Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to confirm on Thursday that Israel was behind a reported missile attack earlier in the day in the Quneitra region in Syria.
“We’re defending ourselves at all times,” Netanyahu said at a national memorial ceremony for Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a Zionist thinker who is the intellectual forebear to Netanyahu’s present-day Likud party.
The prime minister recalled the attack by a Palestinian gunman at the Gaza border earlier in the day that left three soldiers wounded, and added, “We’re also fighting on other fronts. On the northern front, we’re acting against Iran and Hezbollah, and you’re hearing about that now as well.”

Earlier Thursday, official Syrian media said Israel fired a missile at the Quneitra region in a rare daytime raid, causing damage but no injuries.
There was no comment from the Israel Defense Forces on the purported raid on the Syrian Golan Heights, which was reported by the SANA Syrian state news agency.

The Al Arabiya network said the alleged Israeli missile strike in Syria followed movement by members of the Hezbollah terror group in the area.
Hebrew-language reports said residents of the Golan Heights heard explosions.
Israel commonly conducts strikes in Syrian territory, targeting Iranian missile shipments meant for the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah to use against the Jewish state.
According to a report on Tuesday, Israel has expanded its operations against Iranian targets to Iraq, where Air Force jets struck twice in 10 days. 
Asharq Al-Awsat, an Arabic-language newspaper published in London, cited Western diplomatic sources as saying an Israeli F-35 plane was behind a July 19 strike on a rocket depot in a Shiite militia base north of Baghdad.

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