Syria accuses Israel of aligning with rebels

Syrian ministry requests UN counter "Israeli aggressions."

By JPOST.COM STAFF
Assad forces 370 (photo credit: REUTERS)
Assad forces 370
(photo credit: REUTERS)
The Syrian Foreign and Expatriates Ministry said alleged Israeli air strikes on the country targeting elite troops demonstrate Israeli alignment with rebel factions fighting the Assad regime, Syrian news agency Sana reported Monday.
According to the report, the ministry addressed identical letters to both the president and the secretary general of the UN Security Council detailing the alleged attacks by Israeli warplanes. The letters stated that the aerial strikes hit three depots of the Syrian Armed Forces at 1:40 a.m. on Sunday in northeast Jamraya, Maysaloun and a site in al-Dimas near Damascus.
"While stressing its right to defend itself , its land and sovereignty, the Syrian Arab Republic demands that the international Security Council shoulder its responsibilities to stop the Israeli aggression on Syria and prevent its recurrence and prevent the deterioration of the situation in the region so as not to go out of control," the Syrian ministry was reported as saying in the letters.
The ministry's letters also rejected the "unfounded" claims that the country was transferring anything that could have prompted the alleged Israeli strikes, AFP reported Monday.
Western media has reported of Israeli air strikes targeting weapons in transit to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Israel has not commented on two airstrikes early Sunday morning and early Friday, which it allegedly carried out according to foreign media reports.
Likud lawmaker and former Defense Committee chairman Tzahi Hanegbi stopped short Sunday morning of confirming that Israel had hours earlier struck Syrian targets for a second time in days, but warned that Israel would not tolerate a situation in which Hezbollah profited from the civil war currently raging within Syria.
"What we want is primarily is to guarantee that within the chaos in Syria we don’t see Hezbollah getting stronger in such a way that would motivate it to act against us, and as a result of which find ourselves dragged into a confrontation that would lead to greater losses than in the past, because we did not act in time," Hanegbi told Army Radio.