Syria Condemns Israeli Attack, Says Reserves Right to Respond
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Syria’s foreign ministry said the country reserves the right to respond to occasionally-deadly attacks by the Israeli, Turkish, and American forces against Syrian territory and citizens.
In a letter to United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres and the UN Security Council on Wednesday, the ministry denounced an Israeli attack near Damascus, the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported.
Earlier in the day, the Israeli military conducted a missile attack against the Syrian capital of Damascus' countryside, killing four soldiers, wounding three others, and causing some material damage.
The ministry censured the attack as "blatant and cowardly aggression," calling on the UN General Secretariat and Security Council "to condemn the Israeli crimes and demand their cessation and respect (for) the relevant Security Council resolutions," the agency reported.
The attack "coincided with the continuous attacks perpetrated by the US and Turkish occupation forces on Syrian citizens and Syrian lands."
These attacks, it added, were being conducted "in support of terrorist groups," and were therefore threatening to "prolong the war in Syria."
The Israeli regime's attacks on Syria started to grow significantly in scale and frequency after 2011, when Syria found itself in the grip of rampant foreign-backed terrorism.
The regime would, meanwhile, provide safe passage and medical treatment to the Takfiri terrorists that could flee the Syrian military's operations into Syria's Golan Heights that has been under Tel Aviv's occupation since 1967.
Turkey has been conducting an incursion against Syria’s northern parts since 2016 under the pretext of fighting back against Kurdish militants known as the People’s Protection Units (YPG). Turkey associates the YPG with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which has been fighting against Ankara for decades in an effort to carve out a separatist state in southeastern Turkey.
So far, Turkey has deployed thousands of troops in the areas, in what Damascus has decried as, outright violation of its sovereignty.
The United States invaded Turkey in 2014 under the pretext of uprooting the Takfiri terrorist group of Daesh. Washington has refused to withdraw its forces from Syria, although Damascus and its allies defeated Daesh in late 2017.
