kayhan.ir

News ID: 69735
Publish Date : 25 August 2019 - 21:53
Official Rejects Zionist Regime’s Claim:

Iranian Targets Hit in Syria ‘a Lie’

TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- A senior commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) denied on Sunday that Iranian targets had been hit in Israeli airstrikes in Syria, the ILNA news agency reported.
A Zionist military spokesman had claimed that Israeli aircraft on Saturday struck Iranian forces near Damascus that had been planning to launch "killer drones” at targets in Occupied Palestine.  
"This is a lie and not true. Israel and the United States do not have the power to attack Iran’s various centers, and our (military) advisory centers have not been harmed,” said IRGC General Mohsen Rezaei, who is also the secretary of the Assembly of Experts.
Iran says its military are in Syria as advisers and not fighting troops.
"The actions carried out jointly by Israel and the United States in Syria and Iraq are in breach of international law and will soon be answered by Syria and Iraq’s defenders,” said Rezaei, an IRGC chief in the 1980s and 1990s who currently holds no military post.
Iraq on Wednesday blamed a series of recent blasts at several weapons depots and bases in the Arab country on the United States and the occupying regime of Israel.
An Israeli drone fell in the southern suburbs of Beirut and a second one exploded near the ground early on Sunday, the Lebanese army and Hezbollah said, in the first such incident in more than a decade.
The second drone caused some damage when it crashed before dawn close to Hezbollah’s media center in the Dahiyeh suburbs of Lebanon’s capital Beirut, a Hezbollah official told Reuters.
The incident took place hours after the Zionist military claimed its aircraft had struck Iranian forces and Hezbollah fighters near Damascus.
Residents in Dahiyeh said they heard the sound of a blast. A witness said the army closed off the streets where a fire had started.
A Hezbollah spokesman told Lebanon’s state news agency NNA the second drone was rigged with explosives causing serious damage to the media center. Hezbollah is now examining the first drone, he said.
The Lebanese army said that one Israeli drone fell and another exploded at 02:30 am local time (2330 GMT), causing only material damage. "The army arrived immediately and cordoned off the area where the two drones fell,” it said.
Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri said the fall of two Israeli drones in Beirut was a threat to regional stability that heightened tensions, describing it as an open attack on the country’s sovereignty.
Hariri said he was in consultations with President Michel Aoun on what next steps would be undertaken over what he called the "new aggression”. He said there was also a heavy presence of planes in the sky over the capital and its suburbs, his office said in a statement.
The occupying regime of Israel deems Hezbollah as the biggest threat across its border. They fought a month-long war in 2006 in which nearly 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were martyred in Lebanon and 158 Zionists died, mostly soldiers.
Lebanon has complained to the United Nations about Israeli planes regularly violating its airspace in recent years.
Zionist PM Benjamin Netanyahu claimed that the strikes in Syria on Saturday thwarted a planned Iranian attack in Occupied Palestine.
Syrian state media said air defenses confronted the "aggression” and the army said most of the Israeli missiles were destroyed.
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was scheduled to give a televised speech later on Sunday.
Hezbollah’s media officer Muhammad Afif told reporters in televised comments that the resistance movement’s "position in response to this aggression” would come in Nasrallah’s speech.
Afif said the drones had certain "targets” which investigations had so far not established.