{"id":27006,"date":"2018-12-26T17:25:12","date_gmt":"2018-12-26T17:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27006"},"modified":"2018-12-26T17:25:12","modified_gmt":"2018-12-26T17:25:12","slug":"russia-slams-israel-for-gross-violation-in-syria-strikes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=27006","title":{"rendered":"Russia slams Israel for &#8216;gross violation&#8217; in Syria strikes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"body-200771816342556199\" readability=\"107.257881973\">\n<p class=\"speakable\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/russia.html\">Russia<\/a> has accused <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/israel.html\">Israel<\/a> of violating\u00a0Syria&#8217;s sovereignty and threatening two civilian flights after Israeli warplanes launched air raids in Damascus on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\"><span>&#8220;We are very concerned by the attacks and how they were made. This is a gross violation of the sovereignty of Syria,&#8221; the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Wednesday.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"speakable\">Syrian state media said the country&#8217;s air defences <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2018\/12\/syrian-air-defences-intercept-hostile-targets-damascus-181225203809916.html\">intercepted Israeli missiles<\/a> near Damascus, while Israel said it was protecting itself from anti-aircraft fire.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;An [Israeli military] aerial defence system activated in response to an anti-aircraft missile launched from <a class=\"InternalLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/syria.html\">Syria<\/a>,&#8221; the Israeli army&#8217;s official Twitter account later said.<\/p>\n<p>Moscow also said the Israeli attacks endangered two passenger planes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The provocative actions of the Israeli air force &#8230; directly threatened two airliners,&#8221; Russian defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>He said the attack from over the Lebanese territory came as &#8220;two airliners, not from Russia, were preparing to land at the airports of Beirut and Damascus&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He said restrictions were imposed on the use of Syrian government forces&#8217; air defence systems &#8220;to prevent a tragedy&#8221;. One of the planes was redirected to a Russian airbase within Syria.<\/p>\n<p>The Russian defence ministry said three Syrian soldiers were injured in an attack that saw Israeli warplanes drop 16 bombs.<\/p>\n<p>Of these, 14 were destroyed by the Syrian defence systems, according to the ministry.<\/p>\n<h2>Upgraded anti-missile systems<\/h2>\n<p>Moscow is a key ally of Damascus and its intervention in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2016\/05\/syria-civil-war-explained-160505084119966.html\">Syria&#8217;s civil war<\/a> in 2015 was seen as key to propping up President <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/middleeast\/2007\/07\/200852518514154964.html\">Bashar al-Assad<\/a>&#8216;s regime.<\/p>\n<p>In September, a <a class=\"InternalLink\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2018\/09\/russia-military-jet-vanishes-radar-syria-14-aboard-180918045210361.html\" target=\"_blank\">Russian Il-20<\/a> military plane was struck in a similar attack, killing 15 servicemen on board.<\/p>\n<p>That day, several Israeli F-16s entered the Syrian airspace hoping to bomb its military targets in the northwestern Latakia province.<\/p>\n<p>Russian officials said that when Syria&#8217;s S-200 air-defence system responded to the breach, an Israeli F-16 hid behind the Russian plane which was hit by a Syrian missile.<\/p>\n<p>Shortly afterwards, Moscow, blaming Israel for the incident, announced its decision to provide Syria with the more advanced S-300 defence system.<\/p>\n<p>Israel has in the past carried out dozens of air raids in\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/topics\/country\/syria.html\">Syria<\/a>\u00a0against what it says are Iranian targets, many of them south of Damascus.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div readability=\"32\">\n<p>\n            SOURCE:<br \/>\n            <span>Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Russia has accused Israel of violating\u00a0Syria&#8217;s sovereignty and threatening two civilian flights after Israeli warplanes launched air raids in Damascus on Tuesday. &#8220;We are very concerned by the attacks and how they were made. This is a gross violation of the sovereignty of Syria,&#8221; the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":27007,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/27007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}