Russia Reveals Details About Israeli Raids Near Damascus Airport

Damascus Airport (Ashrq Al-Awsat)
Damascus Airport (Ashrq Al-Awsat)
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Russia Reveals Details About Israeli Raids Near Damascus Airport

Damascus Airport (Ashrq Al-Awsat)
Damascus Airport (Ashrq Al-Awsat)

Israel raided Damascus International Airport as the Syrian defenses downed seven of the eight missiles that were fired, according to the Russian Center for Reconciliation.

Deputy Head of the Center Rear Admiral Vadim Kolet said that four Israeli F-16 jets fired in December eight missiles from Golan airspace targeting the Damascus airport area.

Kolet said the Syrian air defenses shot seven of the missiles using Russian-made Pantsir-S systems. He confirmed that the Israeli airstrike caused damages to a warehouse and killed one person.

Also, a Syrian soldier was killed in an airstrike on Thursday, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported.

The agency quoted an unnamed military source saying that the Israeli enemy attacked the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting some points in the southern region, indicating that the air defenses shot down most of the missiles.

The Israeli army refused to comment on the news.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) indicated that Israel recently intensified its strikes in Syria. An attack on November 24 killed five people.

Meanwhile, the UK's Defense Ministry said that British fighter jets shot down a drone approaching al-Tanf base in Syria.

It is the first time the British army had shot down another enemy aircraft since the Falklands War nearly 40 years ago.

The Ministry of Defense said that the drone, which was downed on December 14, posed a threat to the coalition against ISIS in southern Syria.

The UK's Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said: "This strike is an impressive demonstration of the RAF's ability to take out hostile targets in the air that pose a threat to our forces."

"We continue to do everything we can alongside our coalition partners to stamp out the terrorist threat and protect our personnel and our partners."

Two RAF Typhoon FGR4s were patrolling over Syria and Iraq on Tuesday as part of the global coalition against ISIS and were ordered to investigate hostile drone activity near the al-Tanf military base.

The pilots identified a small hostile drone and shot it down using an advanced short-range air-to-air missile.

It was the first operational air-to-air engagement conducted by an RAF Typhoon and the first air-to-air missile firing during Operation Shader, targeting the remnants of ISIS in Iraq and Syria.

A spokesman for US Central Command, US Navy Capt Bill Urban, said two drones entered the al-Tanf garrison "deconfliction" zone on Tuesday. One of them was shot down as it moved closer to the base.

He indicated that there were no casualties or damage to facilities.



Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ after Israeli Minister’s Criticism

A Palestinian mourns as he carries the shrouded body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike the previous night, during a funeral in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on December 21, 2024, as the war between Israel and Hamas militants continues. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
A Palestinian mourns as he carries the shrouded body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike the previous night, during a funeral in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on December 21, 2024, as the war between Israel and Hamas militants continues. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
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Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ after Israeli Minister’s Criticism

A Palestinian mourns as he carries the shrouded body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike the previous night, during a funeral in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on December 21, 2024, as the war between Israel and Hamas militants continues. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
A Palestinian mourns as he carries the shrouded body of a child, killed in an Israeli strike the previous night, during a funeral in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip on December 21, 2024, as the war between Israel and Hamas militants continues. (Photo by Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)

Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.

Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican's various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.

"Yesterday, children were bombed," said the pope. "This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart."

The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel's military campaign against the Palestinian group Hamas.

In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that "what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide".

Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticized those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope's remarks amounted to a "trivialization" of the term genocide.

Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.

The patriarch's office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope's remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.

The Israeli military said on Saturday the patriarch's entry had been approved and he would enter Gaza on Sunday, barring any major security issues. Aid from the patriarch's office entered last week, the military said.

Israel allows clerics to enter Gaza and "works in cooperation with the Christian community to make it easier for the Christian population that remains in the Gaza Strip – including coordinating its removal from the Gaza Strip to a third country," a statement from the military said.

The war began when Hamas-led Palestinian fighters attacked southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 hostages back to Gaza, according to Israeli authorities.

Israel's retaliatory campaign, which it says is aimed at eliminating Hamas, has killed more than 45,000 people, mostly civilians, according to authorities in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip. The campaign has displaced nearly the entire population and left much of the enclave in ruins.

Israel says that at least a third of the dead have been fighters and says it tries to avoid harm to civilians but is battling combatants who it accuses of embedding among the population in dense urban areas. Hamas rejects this.