JERUSALEM
According to a statement released by the Israeli military, the Israeli air force carried out 14 airstrikes against Syrian targets midnight on Thursday, in response to four rockets fired from Syria into northern Israel.
"I said this week that we would hurt whoever tries to attack us, and this is what we have done," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Friday.
"The IDF hit both the cell that carried out the firing and the Syrian forces that made it possible. We have no intention to escalate events but our policy remains as it was. The countries that are rushing to embrace Iran should know that it was an Iranian commander who directed and supported the cell that fired at Israel,” Netanyahu said in a statement published on his office’s website.
An earlier statement from Israel said that the Islamic Jihad Movement in Palestine, which is sponsored by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, was responsible for the rocket attacks.
Islamic Jihad said in a statement Thursday evening that its operations against Israel are carried out only inside Palestine, denying the Israeli accusations.
“We had nothing to do with launching any rockets at Galilee, and the enemy knows how and where al-Quds Brigades respond when we decide,” the statement said, referring to the Islamic Jihad’s armed wing.
The statement went on to say that Israel also held the Syrian government responsible for launching rockets from its territory into Israel.
Israeli Army Radio said that its military is on high alert and mobilized troops on its northern border with Syria.
Warplanes began flying over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, after four missiles landed in the Upper Galilee area in Israel.
A source in the Israeli army told Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper that the rockets landed near cooperative farming villages in the Upper Galilee and did not result in any injuries.
The Upper Galilee municipality called on its residents to stay near emergency shelters.
Yedioth Ahronoth said that this is the first time rockets have been fired from Syrian territories towards Galilee since 1973.
