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JERUSALEM/ANKARA: Israel’s prime minister said on Sunday his country delivered “severe blows” to Iranian and Syrian forces and vowed to take further action against its adversaries following the most serious Israeli engagement in Syria since the war there erupted almost seven years ago.
Benjamin Netanyahu’s tough words to his Cabinet came a day after Israel carried out a wave of airstrikes in Syria. Israel ordered the airstrikes after it intercepted an Iranian drone that had infiltrated its airspace, and an Israeli F-16 was downed upon its return from Syria
“Yesterday we dealt severe blows to the Iranian and Syrian forces,” Netanyahu said. “We made it unequivocally clear to everyone that our rules of action have not changed one bit. We will continue to strike at every attempt to strike at us. This has been our policy and it will remain our policy.”
As the Syrian war winds down, Israeli officials have voiced increasing alarm that Iran and its Shiite allies are establishing a permanent presence in Syria that could turn its aim toward Israel.
Israeli leaders said the airstrikes had sent a clear message to Iran.
“We do not just talk, we act,” said Cabinet Minister Yoav Galant, a former Israeli deputy chief of staff and member of Netanyahu’s Security Cabinet.
“I think that also the Syrians now understand well the fact that they are hosting the Iranians on Syrian soil harms them,” he told The Associated Press.
Saturday’s airstrikes marked the toughest Israeli aerial assault in Syria in decades.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war in Syria through a network of activists on the ground, said Sunday that at least six Syrian troops and allied militiamen were killed in the airstrikes. The six included Syrian and non-Syrian allied troops, the Britain-based Observatory said.
“They, and we, know what we hit and it will take them some time for them to digest, understand and ask how Israel knew how to hit those sites,” Israel’s Intelligence Minister Israel Katz told the Army Radio station. “These were concealed sites and we have intelligence agencies and the ability to know everything that is going on there and yesterday we proved that.”
In Saturday’s attacks, the Israeli jets came under heavy Syrian anti-aircraft fire and the pilots of one of the F-16s had to eject before the plane crashed in northern Israel. One pilot was seriously wounded and the other one lightly.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, addressing flag-waving crowds on central Tehran’s Azadi (Freedom) Square, made no specific reference to Israel’s airstrikes in Syria on Saturday which it said were aimed at air defense and Iranian targets.
But he told the crowd: “They (US and Israel) wanted to create tension in the region ... they wanted to divide Iraq, Syria ... They wanted to create long-term chaos in Lebanon but ... but with our help their policies failed.”
Earlier, hundreds of thousands of Iranians rallied on Sunday to mark the anniversary of Iran’s 1979 revolution, denouncing the US and Israel as oppressors.
Iran backs Syria’s Bashar Assad in the civil war, supports militias in Iraq, Houthi rebels in Yemen and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
UN urges de-escalation
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Saturday called for an immediate de-escalation in Syria after Israel carried out raids inside the war-torn country.
Guterres is “following closely the alarming military escalation throughout Syria and the dangerous spillover across its borders,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.
“He calls on all to work for an immediate and unconditional de-escalation of violence and exercise restraint,” Dujarric said.
Turkish soldier killed
The Turkish military has announced the death of another soldier in Ankara’s operation against a Syrian Kurdish militia in northern Syria.
Sunday’s announcement brings to 31 the number of Turkish soldiers killed since the operation against the Syrian Kurdish militia started on Jan. 20 with Ankara’s cross-border incursion into the enclave of Afrin. Saturday was the deadliest single day for Turkey, with 11 Turkish soldiers killed.
The military’s statement says the soldier died in clashes with the Syrian Kurdish group known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG. Turkey considers the YPG to be “terrorists” and claims it is linked to an outlawed Kurdish insurgent group operating within Turkey’s own borders.