RIYADH: Saudi Arabia condemned and denounced on Thursday continued Israeli violations in the region, including attacks on the Gaza Strip and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to Israeli troops deployed in southern Syria on Wednesday.
“The Kingdom calls on the international community to assume its responsibility to stop Israeli violations of all international laws and agreements, especially the recent ceasefire agreement in the Gaza Strip,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
The statement comes after a pair of Israeli strikes in Gaza’s southern city of Khan Younis early on Thursday killed five people, bringing the death toll from airstrikes in the Palestinian territory to 33 over a roughly 12-hour period.
The strikes have been some of the deadliest since Oct. 10 when a US-brokered ceasefire took effect.
The statement also stressed the importance of “stopping Israeli violations of Syrian territorial sovereignty and adhering to the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement between Israel and Syria in a way that preserves the security and stability of the region, and guarantees the sovereignty and unity of Syrian territory.”
Netanyahu on Wednesday visited Israeli troops deployed in a buffer zone inside Syria. He was accompanied by Defense Minister Israel Katz and Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, as well as military chief Eyal Zamir, the Shin Bet security agency director David Zini, and Israel’s ambassador to the US Yechiel Leiter.
When former Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad was ousted from power in December last year, Israel swiftly sent troops into the UN-patrolled buffer zone, which has separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights since 1974.
