Israel reportedly launches airstrikes near Damascus

Monitoring Desk

DAMASCUS: Israel has reportedly carried out airstrikes outside the Syrian capital Damascus overnight, according to local sources.

Warplanes struck a weapons dump belonging to the Lebanese group Hezbollah in the Jabal al-Mani area, southwest of Damascus, the sources said on condition of anonymity due to security concerns.

The Israeli strike also targeted a site belonging to the Syrian regime in the area, the sources said.

There was no official Israeli comment on the alleged attack. Pro-regime Syrian media, meanwhile, reported some Israeli missiles had been intercepted by air defense systems.

Since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war in 2011, the Israeli army has occasionally struck targets inside Syria, especially after shells fired from its territory fell inside the Golan Heights, which Israel has occupied since 1967.

New power game brewing in post-Daesh Syria: Turkey: Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin on Saturday questioned if the U.S. administration would stop its support for the PKK/PYD terror group in Syria since Daesh has been defeated there.

“Now that Daesh has been defeated in Syria, will the U.S. government stop its support for the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed People’s Protection Units (YPG), the PKK’s affiliates in the country?,” Kalin wrote in an article for Daily Sabah.

“This question was discussed during a recent phone call between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and U.S. President Donald Trump on Nov. 24.

Trump’s response was affirmative, adding that the huge military support the U.S. is providing to the YPG should have ended before. His statement was contradicted only a few days later by the Pentagon,” he wrote.

He called on the U.S. administration to end support for the PKK/PYD.

“Ankara expected Washington to stop its military, financial and political support of the PKK’s Syrian branches after Daesh was defeated in Raqqa and the rest of Syria. After all, U.S. officials told Turkish authorities repeatedly that their relationship with the PYD and YPG was ‘transactional and temporary’ and that the weapons given to them will be taken back.”

The Turkish presidential spokesman also highlighted that images of women were used to romanticize PKK terrorism.