Syria Repels Zionist Attack on Damascus Airport

Date: 20 January 2019 - 21:45

News ID: ۶۲۲۸۹

BEIRUT/MOSCOW (Dispatches) -- Syrian military air defenses thwarted an attack by the occupying regime of Israel on Sunday, shooting down seven missiles targeting an airport in southeastern Damascus, Russia’s National Defense Control Center was cited by RIA news agency as saying.
The attack, launched by four Israeli F-16 jets, did not damage the airport and there were no casualties, the control center was cited as saying.
"Our air defense systems thwarted ... an Israeli air aggression ... and prevented it from achieving any of its goals,” a military source told state news agency SANA. It gave no further details.
The Zionist military later claimed that its Iron Dome interceptor system shot down a rocket fired at the northern part of the occupied Golan Heights on the Syria frontier.
The military’s statement did not immediately specify where the rocket was launched from. The northern Golan is also close to Lebanese territory.
Zionist PM Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged an Israeli attack last week on what he called an Iranian arms cache in Syria.
He claimed that the occupying regime of had carried out "hundreds” of attacks over the past years of Syria’s war to curtail Iran and its ally Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Netanyahu said Israeli forces would attack Iranians in Syria and warned them "to get out of there fast, because we will continue with our resolute policy”.
Head of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Major General Muhammad Ali Jafari dismissed Netanyahu’s threats "a joke”, and warned that the Zionist regime "was playing with a lion’s tail.”
"You should be afraid of the day that our precision-guided missiles roar and fall on your head,” he said.
"Be sure, we do not take into account your ridiculous threats,” the Iranian commanded said. "You know that if we have chosen to wait against your hostile measures, some considerations lie behind it.”
General Jafari also said that "the Islamic Republic of Iran will keep all its military and revolutionary advisers and its weapons in Syria.”
"We will maintain all the military and revolutionary advisers as well as the equipment and weapons, which we have for training and empowering the Islamic resistance’s warriors and for supporting the oppressed people of Syria, in that Islamic nation.”
Iran and Russia have both backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a seven-year war against terrorists and militants, with Tehran sending military advisors to the country.
Russia has warned Israel against carrying out airstrikes near the Damascus International Airport in the Syrian capital, London-based al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper reported on Friday, citing Russian sources.
Moscow said it would not tolerate further airstrikes in the area as it was seeking to renovate the airport and that the air raids were prompting airlines that wanted to resume Syria operations to reconsider their decision, the report said.
Observers view Zionist attacks as a bid to prop up Daesh and other takfiri terrorists who have suffered crushing defeat recently.
Last September, a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance aircraft with 15 servicemen on board was downed by Syria’s S-200 missile launchers, which were at the time responding to Israeli strikes. Moscow held Israel responsible, saying the regime’s pilots had intentionally used the Russian plane as cover to conduct air raids, effectively putting it in the crosshairs of the Syrian air defenses.
Russia stopped coordinating its airborne operations over Syria with the occupying regime after the incident, and upgraded Syria’s defenses with its S-300 missile systems.
Zionist regional cooperation minister Tzachi Hanegbi boasted in October that Syria’s acquisition of the equipment would not trouble Tel Aviv.
A day later, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Vershinin said Moscow hoped Israel would exercise "good judgment” on the delivery of the missile system to the Syrian government as it would be followed by "additional steps”.