Syria condemns Israeli raid as ‘criminal assault’

DAMASCUS

Syria on Nov. 28 condemned the Israeli army’s raid on the town of Beit Jinn in the Damascus countryside as a “criminal assault,” saying the incursion and subsequent airstrikes amounted to a war crime.

A Foreign Ministry statement said an Israeli military patrol crossed into Syrian territory in Beit Jinn, where it confronted local residents and “attacked civilians and their property,” triggering direct clashes that forced the patrol to withdraw.

Israeli forces then launched “deliberate and brutal” strikes on the town after the failed incursion, describing the attack as a “full-fledged war crime,” the statement added.

Syria said it holds Israel “fully responsible” for the raid and its consequences, including casualties and destruction, warning that continued “criminal aggression” threatens regional stability and reflects a systematic effort to destabilize the area and impose “an aggressive reality by force.”

Israeli forces killed 13 people on Nov. 28 in an operation in southern Syria, the deadliest since Bashar al-Assad's fall from power nearly a year ago, which they said was targeting an Islamist group.

Syrian authorities said women and children were among the dead, with some residents still trapped under rubble and dozens of families fleeing the village to safety.

The Israeli army noted in a statement that six Israeli soldiers were injured, including three in critical condition, during the operation.

It claimed that it detained members of “the Jaama Islamiya,” alleging that they “operated in the area of Beit Jinn in southern Syria and advanced attacks against Israeli civilians.”

Israel sent troops into the U.N.-patrolled buffer zone, which has separated Israeli and Syrian forces on the Golan Heights since 1974, in the immediate aftermath of Assad's fall.

Israel has occupied Syria's Golan Heights, a strategic mountain plateau, since 1967, annexing it in 1981 in a move not recognised by the international community.

Last week Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited Israeli troops deployed in the buffer zone,

On Nov. 27, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz claimed that some foreign militias, including Houthis, were preparing for an attack on Golan.