ANSD : Israel working to keep foes from acquiring hi-tech arms

THU 25 - 4 - 2024

Date: Sep 17, 2018
Source: The Daily Star

Israel working to keep foes from acquiring hi-tech arms

OCCUPIED JERUSALEM/DAMASCUS: Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that his country is taking action to stop its foes from acquiring sophisticated arms, hours after Damascus said Israeli missiles targeted its airport.

Israel has not officially confirmed or denied a report by Syrian state news agency SANA of an attack late Saturday on Damascus international airport. “Israel is constantly working to prevent our enemies from arming themselves with advanced weaponry,” Netanyahu’s office quoted him as saying at the start of his Cabinet’s weekly meeting.

“Our red lines are as sharp as ever and our determination to enforce them is stronger than ever.”

SANA quoted a Syrian military source as saying that air defenses “shot down a number of hostile missiles” during the attack.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strikes hit a weapons depot outside the airport.

Israel has vowed to prevent its archfoe Iran, which is a main backer of the Damascus government, from gaining a military foothold in neighboring war-torn Syria.

Earlier this month, Israel acknowledged having carried out more than 200 strikes in Syria over the past 18 months, mainly against Iranian targets. It has also admitted to striking Syria to prevent what it says are deliveries of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah.

In other developments, Syrians in government-controlled areas cast their ballots Sunday in the first municipal elections since 2011, amid tensions with the country’s self-administered Kurdish region, which refused to allow polls.

Candidates campaigned on promises to promote reconstruction after seven years of civil war left cities and towns in ruins.

“We hope we can meet the people’s aspirations and improve conditions and services in the city,” said Hassan Taraqji, a Baath party candidate in Damascus.

A vast majority of the candidates in Sunday’s polls were members of the ruling Baath party or affiliated to it, which deterred some people from casting their ballots.

“Why vote? Will anything change? Let’s be honest,” said Humam, a 38-year-old working in the capital’s Mazzeh district who opted to stay at home.

The war waged by President Bashar Assad’s government against local opposition forces and Daesh (ISIS) has cost the country more than $300 billion in economic damage, according to a recent U.N. study. Observers say more than 400,000 people have been killed.

But parts of the country remain beyond Damascus’ reach, including the U.S.-backed self-administered Kurdish region in north Syria, which also includes Arab and minority populations. The region is governed by its own Syrian Democratic Council, which refused to allow the Damascus-organized elections to proceed on its territory.

“The regime wants us to remain under its rule and under the rule of the Baath,” said Ibrahim Ibrahim, a spokesman for the administration.

Kurdish officials say they want a federalized Syria that respects the northeast’s autonomy from Damascus and guarantees rights and privileges for national minorities.

High-level meetings between representatives of the SDC and Baath and federal officials in Damascus are yet to produce a breakthrough.

Damascus insists it will assert its authority over the whole country.

Hussein Dabboul, a Member of Parliament from Aleppo, a north Syrian city near the edges of the self-administration zone, said the SDC was “linked to foreign powers and to the United States, and it has certain objectives and targets.”

More than 40,000 candidates are competing for 18,478 council seats, according to the Local Administration Ministry. Polls were slated to close at 7 p.m. local time, but authorities extended voting nationwide until midnight. Sunday is the first day of the workweek in Syria.

Opposition-held areas were excluded from the polls. Some 3 million people of Syria’s pre-war population of 22 million live under opposition rule in the country’s northwest Idlib province and surrounding areas. Another 5.6 million are refugees abroad; they were also excluded from the vote.

Syrian troops have amassed around the opposition bastion for weeks.

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