Syria says Israeli airstrike kills 5

The Israeli regime’s air force carried out a drone strike in southern Syria on Friday, killing five people, while a soldier was killed and seven wounded in an air raid overnight, Syrian state TV reported.

Israel’s army said the strikes were a response to cross-border rocket fire from Syria.

Sent by Jeremy Issacharoff, the vice director general of Israel Foreign Affairs Ministry, the document said Israel has “credible information” that Thursday’s rocket attack was ordered by “Iranian Operative Saeed Izaadhi” and carried out by the Palestinian branch of militant group Islamic Jihad.

“The Israel Defense Forces targeted 14 Syrian military posts in the Syrian Golan Heights”, a statement by the IDF spokesperson unit said early Friday.

Thursday’s exchanges came two days after Mr Netanyahu and Moshe Ya’alon, the Israeli defence minister, visited Israel’s northern border region to emphasise the threats the country faced there.

The Israeli news organization Ynet said there were fatalities in Syria from one of the airstrikes.

Earlier in the day, Israeli media reports said two projectiles landed in an open area near a village in northern Galilee.

Though Israel has no plans to “escalate” the situation, Netanyahu’s office will uphold its policy.

The possibility that Allan might die of his fast had drawn Islamic Jihad threats to attack Israel, which in turn deployed Iron Dome rocket interceptors outside Gaza as a precaution.

He also blamed Iran for ordering Thursday’s rocket fire, underlining Israel’s concern that a nuclear deal between Tehran and six world powers had emboldened the republic.

Iran is one of Assad’s main backers and a supporter of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

However, the widely quoted London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack had killed two pro-regime militiamen traveling in a vehicle.

Israel’s military said the rockets were fired by the Iran-backed Islamic Jihad group.

Israel “holds the Syrian government responsible for attacks emanating from Syria”, the army said, adding it had retaliated against targets in Syria. Since Israel attacks Syria on a fairly regular basis, and often without even this much pretext, it was likely just the simplest course of action for them.

The Israeli security source said, “We are not interested in being dragged into the conflict inside Syria”.

Iran has been a key financial and military ally to Damascus since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011.