Israel Makes Indirect Admission to Air Strike in Syria
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iStockphoto/Thinkstock(MUNICH) — Israel finally delivered a public yet coy statement on Sunday about last week’s assault on a truck convoy inside Syria.
At a security conference in Munich, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak insisted he could not “add anything to what you have read in the newspapers about what happened in Syria several days ago,” seemingly continuing his government’s silence on the issue.
However, Barak then told reporters, “It’s another proof that when we say something we mean it. We say that we don’t think that it should be allowable to bring advanced weapon systems into Lebanon, the Hezbollah from Syria, when [Syrian President Bashar al-] Assad falls.”
U.S. and Western officials said that Israeli war jets hit the convoy that were carrying surface-to-air missiles from Syria to Hezbollah, a powerful political force in Lebanon and Israel’s sworn enemy. The action was condemned by Syria, Hezbollah, Iran and Russia.
According to Syria’s official news agency SANA, Israel struck a military research center northeast of the capital that left several people dead and destroyed part of the facility.
Later, Syrian President al-Assad accused Israel of attempting to wreak havoc in his country in the wake of last week’s raid by its war jets.
In his first public comments about the assault, al-Assad argued the attack “unmasked the true role Israel is playing…to destabilize and weaken Syria.”
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