An Israeli drone strike on the Beit Jinn road wounded a truck driver, and Damascus called it a sovereignty breach. Israel Katz said Tom Barrack's criticism of the Idlib air base strike was full of inaccuracies.
Several people were hurt in an Israeli drone strike on the Beit Jinn road in the western Damascus countryside. A truck driver was wounded in the right hand and taken to hospital in stable condition. Israel's military said the man it hit posed an immediate threat to its forces, and that it had targeted a fighter whose attack on its forces was in its final stages of preparation.[1]
Syria's foreign ministry called the strike a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic and a blatant breach of international law. Qatar's foreign ministry expressed strong condemnation and denunciation, calling it an unacceptable aggression against Syria's sovereignty, and Jordan issued a similar statement. A Syrian diplomatic source said Damascus still wants the tension brought down through a security arrangement with Israel based on the 1974 disengagement agreement, pursued with US mediation.[1]
Tom Barrack, the US envoy for Syria, had called the 18 August attack on a disused air base an unnecessary escalation, and said on 21 August it may have been meant to provoke Turkey. He made the second remark in an interview with the influencer Mario Nawfal. Israel Katz answered on 22 August that the remarks were full of inaccuracies. Katz wrote on X that Israel had passed intelligence information to the authorised parties in the United States before the 18 August strike, and that Barrack's comments contradicted President Donald Trump's own position on the Golan Heights after the envoy called the territory occupied. Israel captured most of the Golan Heights in the 1967 war and later annexed the areas it holds, a step recognised only by the United States and, this month, Colombia. Israel has accused Turkey of seeking to use the bombed base, and Ankara denies having any military presence there.[2]
