Syria Warns ‘Israel’ Against ‘Playing with Fire’ After Airstrikes on Damascus, Aleppo

By Staff, Agencies

Syria’s Foreign Minister Faisal Mikdad sternly warned that the ‘Israeli’ occupation regime is "playing with fire" after it conducted airstrikes near the capital, Damascus, and on Aleppo's international airport.

Mikdad made the harsh warning in a tweet on the Syrian foreign ministry’s account on Thursday, saying the ‘Israeli’ regime was risking a wider military conflict and that Damascus would not remain silent in the face of Tel Aviv’s aggression.

"‘Israel’ is playing with fire and is putting the regional military and security situations at risk of an explosion," state-run SANA news agency quoted Mikdad as saying. "Syria will not remain silent regarding the repeated ‘Israeli’ attacks and the ‘Israelis’ will pay the price sooner or later."

The top Syrian diplomat underlined that the US and Western governments should be held responsible for encouraging the Tel Aviv regime to increase its aggression and threaten peace and security in the region and across the world.

SANA reported late on Wednesday that the Syrian army’s air defenses had confronted an ‘Israeli’ missile attack on some posts in the Damascus countryside, shooting down a number of them. ‘Israel’ also targeted Aleppo International Airport with airstrikes which caused material damage.

Also on Thursday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry called on the United Nations Security Council and UN Secretariat to condemn the ‘Israeli’ attacks on the country’s territory as a violation of sovereignty and a direct threat to regional and international peace and security.

“Syria draws the attention of the General Secretariat to the fact that this is not the first time the ‘Israeli’ occupation forces have targeted public commercial and civil facilities or air and sea ports in Syria, endangering navigation, commercial and civil air and sea transport, as well as the lives and safety of civilians,” the ministry said in a statement.

The statement underscored that the ‘Israeli’ occupation deliberately targets Syrian airports and civilian aircraft in Syria's airspace.

“Syria preserves its full rights in holding the ‘Israeli’ occupation accountable legally, morally, politically and financially for deliberately targeting the international airports of Damascus and Aleppo and causing all that sabotage and destruction,” it added.

Syria and the Zionist regime are technically at war due to the latter’s 1967-to-present occupation of the Arab country’s Golan Heights. The Zionist entity maintains a significant military presence in the territory, which it uses as one of its launching pads for attacks against the Syrian soil.

The ‘Israeli’ attacks on Syria started to grow significantly in scale and frequency after 2011 when the Arab country found itself in the grips of foreign-backed militancy and terrorism.

The Wednesday attack was the second one by the Tel Aviv regime to target the Arab country's airports.

On June 10, the occupying regime attacked the Damascus International Airport, causing the airport to go completely out of service for a period of two weeks.

Syria called on the United Nations and the world body’s Security Council at the time to condemn in clear and explicit terms the ‘Israeli’ regime’s recurrent and often deadly acts of aggression against the country’s territory.