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Israel attack on Damascus air base follows suicide bomb

ISRAEL attacked an air base on the outskirts of Damascus yesterday — mere miles from the site of a suicide bombing hours earlier.

Syrian military sources told the Sana news agency that missiles launched from the Sea of Galilee area struck the Mezzeh air base west of the capital, setting off explosions in an ammunition dump.

The sources claimed the latest Israeli attack was in support of foreign-backed insurgents “to raise their morale.”

“The army command and armed forces warn Israel of repercussions for flagrant attacks on our soil,” the Armed Forces General Command said.

No casualties were reported.

In a letter of protest to UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, the Foreign Ministry said it was just the latest in “a long series of Israeli attacks since the beginning of the terrorist war on the sovereignty, territorial integrity and Syria’s independence.

It alleged the attack was planned by “the Israeli, French and British intelligence agencies and their agents in Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and other countries that wanted to impose control and hegemony on Syria and the region.”

Earlier a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a sports club in Damascus, two miles east of the air base, killing eight people and wounding others.

But in a major breakthrough, Syrian TV reported that technicians had entered the village of Ayn al Fijah in the Barada valley — where

people have been denied drinking water for three weeks — to repair water treatment works at the spring there under a deal with occupying insurgents.

On Thursday troops drove the militants from the nearby village of Basimah.

The al-Qaida-affiliated Levant Conquest Front (LCF) poisoned the water supply with diesel fuel on December 22, then blew up the works just before New Year.

Turkey and the Western-backed Ahrar as-Sham faction — an LCF ally that has rejected the Russia-Turkey brokered ceasefire — have accused the government of breaking the ceasefire in its efforts to end the crisis.

In Geneva on Thursday night, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said the US “should be definitely invited” to the January 23 peace talks in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana — three days after the inauguration of president-elect Donald Trump.

The outgoing Obama government was left out of the ceasefire talks.

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