Tel Aviv: Israeli sources say that the Russian air defence systems deployed in Syria have not acted against the Israeli aircraft that destroyed another shipment of Iranian weapons not because a Russian plane was in the area but because Putin decided not to intervene.
“The Russians are fed up with the Iranian operations in Syria,” one of the sources said.
On December 28 the Israeli airforce attacked a container storage place in the port of Latakia.
In recent years Israel performed hundreds of air raids against Iranian related targets in Syria, but avoided attacking targets in the port of Latakia considering the Russian presence in the area. The decision was taken in spite of the fact that Iran is using this port to send weapons to the Hezbollah in Lebanon.
SANA, Syria’s state media, quoted an unnamed military official as saying that several missiles struck the container area in the port, setting some of them on fire. He said the strikes caused “massive material damage.”
The Israel Defence Forces did not comment on the Syrian claims, as a matter of policy.
Videos posted to social media showed huge explosions and fires raging across the port, some of them apparently caused by secondary blasts from the missiles causing Iranian munitions to detonate.
According to SANA, the missiles came from the direction of the Mediterranean.
The Syrian military official said efforts were still underway to put out fires and assess the damage. There were no immediate reports of casualties in the attack, which activated Syrian air defenses, according to SANA.
The Russians claimed that their air defence systems did not launched missiles in order to disrupt the Israeli attack, because one of their cargo aircraft was in the air nearby.
The Israeli sources rejected that claim and said that the Russians have not intervened because they are against the Iranian operations in Syria, that interfere their activities in the country.
-The writer is an Israel-based freelance journalist. The views expressed are of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the views of Raksha Anirveda
