Syria Blames Israel For Air Strikes On Aleppo Airbase

The Assad regime has blamed Israel for what Syrian state media claim was an attack on an industrial zone housing Iranian weapons depots at the Nayrab Airbase in the city of Aleppo. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the conflict, reported that Israeli fighter jets hit “ammunition stores belonging to Iranian forces and allied groups, and caused huge explosions.” It added that at least seven Iranian-linked fighters were killed in the attack. If true, it would mark a rare Israeli strike in Syria since last October, when Russia delivered the advanced S-300 missile defense system to Damascus. Prior to that, Israel had struck hundreds of Iranian military sites and installations in Syria, including the base said to have been hit at around midnight on Thursday. The development comes against the background of US President Donald Trump’s official recognition of Israeli sovereignty over parts of the Golan Heights captured from Syria in the 1967 war. Damascus slammed the decision and called for an emergency session of the UN Security Council, where country after country said Washington’s move violated a 1981 resolution describing Israel’s annexation of the territory as “null and void and without international legal effect.” Only a few Security Council members used the opportunity to condemn the Assad regime for indiscriminately bombing civilians, deploying chemical weapons and perpetrating gross human rights violations during the country’s civil war, which just went into its ninth year. All 28 European Union countries denounced Trump’s declaration on the Golan despite a stated intention by some to follow Washington’s lead by relocating their embassies to Jerusalem.