BALADI NEWS
Israel said its warplanes carried out a "very intense" attack against Iranian forces and Syrian army targets in Syria Wednesday in retaliation for a rocket attack on the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights the day before.
In a rare confirmation of their operations in Syria, the Israeli army said they had carried out dozens of strikes against the Iranian elite Quds Force and the Syrian military.
Britain-based monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said 23 people were killed in the strikes -- 21 fighters and two civilians.
Sixteen were non-Syrian fighters, the group's head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement Wednesday that he has "made clear that whoever hurts us, we will hurt them."
The Israeli army said they had targeted about a dozen military sites, including warehouses and military command centres.
"It was very intense," spokesman Jonathan Conricus told AFP.
The most important target, he said, was a control facility at the main international airport in Damascus.
"It is the main building that serves the (Iranian) Revolutionary Guards... for coordinating the logistic facilities of transport of military hardware from Iran to Syria and from Syria onwards," he said.
The Israeli attack Wednesday began in the early hours, with a series of large explosions rocking Damascus, according to AFP.
Syria's state news agency SANA said Syrian anti-aircraft defences responded to a "heavy attack" by Israeli warplanes over the capital.
SANA added that the strikes were carried out from "Lebanese and Palestinian territories".
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov was quoted by TASS news agency as saying the operation "totally contradicts international law".
"We are going to examine the circumstances, all this is very bad," he added.
Source: Agencies.
