Israeli strikes ‘show coordination with terrorists’, Syria says

PanARMENIAN.Net - Israeli strikes on Syrian army targets “show coordination with terrorists including al-Nusra militants,” the Syrian foreign ministry has said, according to BBC News.

The strikes had led to a number of casualties and widespread damage, it reported in a letter sent to the UN.

Earlier, state media said a research centre had been hit. Israeli sources said they were targeting weapons bounds for Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. The strike is the second in two days. On Friday, May 3 Israeli aircraft hit a shipment of missiles near the Lebanon border, according to unnamed U.S. and Israeli officials.

"The flagrant Israeli attack on armed forces sites in Syria underlines the co-ordination between 'Israel', terrorist groups and ... the al-Nusra Front," the Syrian foreign ministry statement said, referring to al-Qaeda militants fighting with the rebels.

"The Israeli attack led to the fall of a number of martyrs and wounded from the ranks of Syrian citizens, and led to widespread destruction in these sites and in the civilian districts near to them."

Syrian state TV said the cabinet was holding an extraordinary session to discuss the attack.

Egypt and the Arab League also condemned the strikes and demanded UN action

In the attack Damascus was shaken by repeated explosions coming from the north-western suburbs. Amateur video footage and eyewitness testimony suggested rocket attacks had hit weapons dumps, triggering dramatic orange-flamed blasts.

The area houses numerous military facilities, including the Jamraya research centre, designated by Syria as a scientific research centre "in charge of raising our level of resistance and self-defense".

Damascus-based journalist Alaa Ebrahim told the BBC it was "the biggest explosion" the city had seen since the conflict began two years ago.

He said residents living near Jamraya reported feeling a "mild earthquake" just before the blast, indicating that the rockets may have hit an underground facility.

The Jamraya facility was also apparently hit in an Israeli air strike in January.

Israeli officials confirmed the January strike, but insisted it had targeted trucks carrying missiles to Hezbollah.

After the latest attack, unnamed Western intelligence sources have again said the target was a weapons cache heading for Lebanon.

Israel has repeatedly said it would act if it felt advanced weapons were being transferred to militant groups in the region, especially Hezbollah.