ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Syrian leadership on Tuesday condemned Israel's deadly bombardment of targets in the southwestern province of Daraa, calling for an international investigation into the attacks, according to a statement from the Syrian foreign ministry.
“We reaffirm our firm rejection of these crimes and call for an international investigation into the transgressions committed [by Israel] against innocent civilians,” the statement read.
The foreign ministry additionally urged Syrians in Daraa to remain in their regions and resist efforts to displace them and “impose a new reality” in the province.
Earlier in the day, local authorities in Daraa reported that at least four people, including a woman, were killed and several others injured in an “Israeli shelling” that occurred in parallel with an “incursion by Israeli occupation forces” into the town of Koya, west of Daraa.
The bombardment sparked a state of panic among locals, prompting “a large wave of displacement from Koya,” the Daraa authorities added.
The Syrian foreign ministry later raised the death toll to six, warning that the number is “likely” to rise, as some of the injured persons have sustained “critical injuries.”
Slamming the Israeli operations as a “blatant violation of national sovereignty and international law,” the ministry said the Israeli escalation is part of “an ongoing aggression on Syrian territory.”
For their part, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on Tuesday confirmed launching airstrikes on two military bases in Syria’s central Homs province to destroy "military capabilities" in the area. However, the IDF made no mention of the attacks in Daraa, southwest of the country.
Since the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in early December, Israel has scrambled to destroy Damascus’s military stockpiles. It also sent troops across the border into a buffer zone east of the annexed Golan Heights, justifying the move as a precaution amid the political instability in Syria.
Throughout the Syrian civil war, Israel carried out hundreds of strikes, often justifying them as targeting pro-Iran armed groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah which supported Assad at the time.
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