{"id":1164137,"date":"2026-08-23T03:21:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-23T03:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1164137\/"},"modified":"2026-08-23T03:21:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-23T03:21:14","slug":"israel-bombs-syria-as-us-envoy-says-base-attack-aimed-at-baiting-turkiye-conflict-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1164137\/","title":{"rendered":"Israel bombs Syria as US envoy says base attack aimed at \u2018baiting\u2019 Turkiye | Conflict News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Israel has launched a drone attack on a vehicle in southwestern Syria, wounding several people, as the United States\u2019 envoy to Damascus suggested that an earlier attack on a northwestern airbase could have been aimed at \u201cbaiting<\/a>\u201d Turkiye.<\/p>\n

Syria\u2019s official Alikhbariya channel reported on Saturday that an Israeli drone hit a civilian vehicle near the town of Beit Jinn in the Damascus countryside, wounding a man.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

Syria\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates condemned \u201cin the strongest terms\u201d the Israeli targeting of a \u201ccivilian vehicle\u201d and said it resulted in several\u00a0civilian injuries.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis attack constitutes a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic and the integrity of its territory, and a blatant breach of international law, and comes in the context of repeated Israeli attacks on Syrian territory,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s military\u00a0confirmed the strike, saying in a statement that it had targeted \u201ca terrorist who advanced terror attacks in their final stages of preparation\u201d in southern Syria. The activity \u201cposed an immediate threat to our forces\u201d, the military added.<\/p>\n

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syria since the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad in December 2024. It has also sent troops into a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone that for decades had separated Israeli and Syrian forces in the Golan Heights.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, it attacked<\/a> the Abu al-Duhur airbase in northwestern Idlib province, claiming Turkiye had been seeking to establish a military presence there. Both Damascus and Ankara deny the allegations.<\/p>\n

United States special envoy for Syria and Iraq, Tom Barrack, who is also ambassador to Turkiye, had condemned the attack as an \u201cunnecessary escalation\u201d and on Friday said the strike may have been intended to provoke a conflict with Turkiye ahead of the upcoming general elections in Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne theory is they were just baiting Turkiye, and it\u2019s a very aggressive, but maybe well-received, pre-election concept,\u201d Barrack said in an interview with influencer Mario Nawfal.<\/p>\n

The envoy also said Israel did not warn the US before the strike.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s Defence Minister Israel Katz hit back on Saturday, calling the remarks \u201cfull of inaccuracies\u201d.<\/p>\n

Israel sees southern Syria \u2018as a security zone\u2019<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s latest strike on Syria hit a small delivery truck on the main road between the Beit Jinn farmland and the town itself, according to Al Jazeera Arabic\u2019s correspondent Adham Abu al-Hussam.<\/p>\n

\u201cResidents say [one of the victims is] a civilian who works as a driver, delivering goods and orders on this truck,\u201d Abu al-Hussam said, adding that neighbours rushed a wounded man to hospital after hearing the explosion.<\/p>\n

He is in stable condition with an injury to his right hand, according to a medical source.<\/p>\n

Abu al-Hussam said residents had reported Israeli reconnaissance drones flying over the area for four days. Beit Jinn, which lies near Jabal al-Sheikh and roughly 55km (34 miles) from Damascus, has been repeatedly targeted in the past year, including in a late November raid that killed 13 civilians, he said.<\/p>\n

Muhsen al-Mustafa, a security and strategic researcher at the Omran Center for Strategic Studies in Damascus, told Al Jazeera that the attack could be a message from Israel to the Syrian government.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael currently treats Syria, particularly the south, as a security zone it is trying to fill any vacuum in.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said Israel had used a similar rationale days earlier when it struck the Abu al-Duhur <\/a>airbase, saying the aim was to prevent a Turkish military presence there.<\/p>\n

That strike, he said, signalled that Israel\u2019s declared security zone \u201cisn\u2019t limited to the south\u201d but \u201cextends even to Abu al-Duhur airport\u201d, roughly in the middle of the country. \u201cIsrael\u2019s security zone, it\u2019s saying, extends further than that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Al-Mustafa suggested that Israel opted for a drone strike rather than sending in ground forces partly because of a November raid,<\/a> when Israeli troops came under direct fire during the incursion into Beit Jinn and six soldiers were injured, three of them seriously. \u201cIsrael is always trying to apply pressure and ask for more in every round of negotiation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

A Syrian diplomatic source told Al Jazeera that Damascus remains committed to de-escalation and is pursuing a security arrangement with Israel through US mediation, based on the 1974 Disengagement Agreement.<\/p>\n

Qatar also expressed its \u201cstrong condemnation and denunciation of the Israeli attack\u201d on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Qatar] considers this an unacceptable aggression and a violation of Syria\u2019s sovereignty, and a threat to its security and safety\u201d, a statement by the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, affirming Doha\u2019s solidarity with the current Syrian government.<\/p>\n

\u201cIsrael\u2019s continued violation of the sovereignty of regional countries constitutes a dangerous approach and unacceptable escalation, and a disregard for the provisions of international law,\u201d it added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Israel has launched a drone attack on a vehicle in southwestern Syria, wounding several people, as the United…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1164138,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5],"tags":[6178,32302,837,839,12,6500,26],"class_list":["post-1164137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-conflict","tag-drone-strikes","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-syria","tag-world"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1164137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1164137\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1164138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1164137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1164137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1164137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}