JERUSALEM/DAMASCUS: Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman on Sunday threatened to destroy Syrian air defense systems after they fired ground-to-air missiles at Israeli warplanes carrying out strikes.
Meanwhile, fierce clashes have broken out on the eastern side of the Syrian capital following an ambush by opposition-aligned forces, according to residents in Damascus.
Speaking on on Israeli public radio, Lieberman said: “The next time the Syrians use their air defense systems against our planes we will destroy them without the slightest hesitation,”
Israeli warplanes hit several targets in Syria on Friday, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying the strikes targeted weapons bound for Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement.
Syria’s military said it had downed one of the Israeli planes and hit another as they were carrying out the pre-dawn strikes near the famed desert city of Palmyra that it recaptured from militants this month.
The Israeli military denied that any planes had been hit.
An Israeli army statement said “several anti-aircraft missiles” were fired following the raid but that none hit their targets.
One missile was intercepted by Israel’s Arrow air defense system, Israeli media reported.
It was the most serious incident between the two countries since the Syrian civil war began six years ago.
In April 2016, Netanyahu admitted for the first time that Israel had attacked dozens of convoys transporting weapons in Syria destined for Hezbollah, which fought a 2006 war with Israel and is now battling alongside the Damascus regime.
“Each time we discover arms transfers from Syria to Lebanon we will act to stop them. On this there will be no compromise,” Lieberman said Sunday.
“The Syrians must understand that they are held responsible for these arms transfers to Hezbollah and that if they continue to allow them then we will do what we have to do.”
Israel does not usually confirm or deny individual raids, but it may have been led to do so this time by the circumstances of the incident.
President Bashar Assad’s position has been strengthened in recent months with his forces reclaiming the whole of Syria’s second city Aleppo, as well as enjoying continued Russian support.
Lieberman said he did not wish “to interfere in the Syrian civil war or provoke a confrontation with the Russians” but that Israel’s security would remain his top priority.
Israel seized most of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed it in 1981, in a move never recognized by the international community.
Israel and Syria are still technically at war, though the border had remained largely quiet for decades until 2011 when the Syrian conflict began.
Meanwhile, opposition fighters are reported to have detonated two large car bombs at 5:20 a.m. on Sunday morning close to the Jobar neighborhood of Damascus. Residents say artillery shells and rockets are landing inside the heart of the city.
Government warplanes responded with a number of raids around the areas of the clashes.
Israel-Syria conflict reaches a flashpoint
Israel-Syria conflict reaches a flashpoint
British mother calls for son’s repatriation from Syria
- Jack Letts has been held for more than 9 years without trial after joining Daesh
- Fears raised for his safety amid US move to transfer thousands of detainees to Iraq
LONDON: A British-born man being held in the Syrian Arab Republic should be repatriated to Canada or the UK, his mother has said.
Jack Letts, 30, joined Daesh aged 18 and was captured by Syrian-Kurdish forces in 2017. He has been held for nine years without trial.
Recent fighting between Syrian government and Kurdish forces has raised concerns about security in the region, with Letts one of 7,000 prisoners who could be moved to more secure locations.
Last week, US Central Command said it had begun to airlift prisoners out of Kurdish-run prisons.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio thanked Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani on Sunday after revealing that 150 of the most dangerous detainees had been sent to “secure facilities” in the neighboring country.
Letts’ mother Sally Lane said she is “frantically trying to find out as much as possible” about her son’s situation.
“We’ve heard absolutely nothing. They think we don’t deserve to know,” she said. “I can’t see that western governments will allow their citizens to be put on trial in Iraq where they have the death penalty and flawed trials.”
Letts was stripped of his UK citizenship in 2019, leaving him with Canadian citizenship as it is the country of his father’s birth.
He has had no contact with his family in the intervening years, but has been interviewed a number of times by Western news outlets.
“I’m not going to say I’m innocent. I’m not innocent. I deserve what comes to me. But I just want it to be … not just haphazard, freestyle punishment in Syria,” he told ITV in 2019.
In a later interview with a Canadian broadcaster, he claimed to have been a victim of Daesh, saying he was imprisoned by the group on three occasions after rejecting its ideology.
Lane said Letts should be returned to the UK or Canada to stand trial if terror charges can be brought. “If there’s evidence, put them on trial. But there is no evidence,” she added.
Rubio and Al-Sudani discussed “ongoing diplomatic efforts to ensure countries rapidly repatriate their citizens in Iraq, bringing them to justice,” the US State Department said.
Lane said she does not believe that her son is significant enough to have been transferred as part of the priority airlift, but voiced concerns after Centcom said it plans to complete the operation in “days not weeks.”
She added: “Jack’s small fry. He’s mostly been held in local prisons. He’s high profile only because he’s been in the news.”
UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper told the BBC last week that she had been “in touch” with Rubio to discuss the situation in Syria, with “shared interests in countering terrorism and extremism” on the agenda.
The news came after revelations that the UK had repatriated six women and 10 children from Kurdish-run prison camps in northern Syria in recent years, with 55 more people still in detention.
