DAMASCUS (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime’s military is concerned over warnings by anti-terror groups that they will retaliate for attacks on Syria carried out by the occupying regime, Israel Hayom reported.
The airstrike targeted the Palmyra area in the eastern countryside of Homs late on Wednesday, with Syria’s official news agency SANA specifying the exact target as “a communications tower and some of its surrounding areas.”
The Syrian defense ministry said the Zionist regime’s missiles flew over Jordanian airspace above U.S. forces based in the Tanf area at the Syrian-Iraqi border, adding that one soldier was killed and three others were wounded as a result of the attack.
The Lebanese al-Mayadeen television channel, citing Lebanon’s Unews press agency, quoted the command of the Syria Allies Operations Room as saying in a statement on Thursday that the pro-Damascus counter-terrorism forces had decided to retaliate against the Zionist regime for its aggression on the city of Palmyra.
A Russian general said ther Zionist regime used civilian aircraft as a shield against Syrian air defense systems during its attacks.
“On October 13, from 23:35 to 23:39, four F-16 tactical fighters of the Israeli Air Force entered Syrian airspace in the U.S.-occupied al-Tanf zone in Homs Province and struck a phosphate ore processing plant in the Palmyra region,” Rear Admiral Vadim Kulit, deputy head of the Russian Center for the Reconciliation of Warring Parties in Syria, said at a briefing.
Kulit said the Syrian military, however, decided not to target the occupying regime’s jets that carried out the strike in central Syria because there were two civilian airliners in the sky at the time.
“The Syrian military leadership decided not to use air defense systems, since at the time of the Israeli aviation attack, two civilian passenger aircraft were in the zone of destruction of the anti-aircraft systems,” Kulit said, Sputnik news reported.
Anti-terror groups in Syria vowed a “very harsh” response to the overnight aerial act of aggression by the Zionist regime against the central Syrian province of Homs that left a number of casualties, the second such strike in a week.
“The command of the operations room has taken the decision to respond to this attack in retaliation for the lives of the martyrs and the blood of the wounded, and the response will be very harsh,” the groups said in the statement, adding that the casualties would have been much higher had the forces not been well spread across the area.
“Our mission has long been under the state’s patronage to confront terrorists and the Takfiri scheme, atop of which is Daesh,” the command of Syria Allies Operations Room said.
The latest attack came just a few days after Syria’s air defenses thwarted a Zionist missile attack on a military air base, known as T-4, in Homs, shooting down most of the incoming projectiles.
The aerial assault had similarly been initiated from the direction of the al-Tanf area, with SANA reporting that the Zionist aggression wounded “six soldiers” and resulted in “some material losses.”
Syria has been gripped by foreign-backed militancy since March 2011. The Syrian government says the Zionist regime and its Western and regional allies are aiding terrorist groups that are wreaking havoc in the country.
The Zionist regime frequently targets military positions inside Syria, especially those of the resistance movement Hezbollah which has played a key role in helping the Syrian army in its fight against the foreign-backed terrorists.