JERUSALEM, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) -- Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Sunday that Israel had attacked multiple Iranian sites in Syria over the weekend, in a rare public acknowledgment of such airstrikes.
"Just in the last 36 hours, the air force attacked Iranian warehouses with Iranian weapons at the international airport in Damascus," Netanyahu said at the start of his weekly cabinet meeting, confirming earlier Syrian reports.
He warned that "the accumulation of recent attacks proves that we are determined more than ever to take action against Iran in Syria, just as we promised."
The remarks were part of farewell comments marking the stepping down of Lt.-Gen. Gadi Eisenkot as the chief-of-staff of the Israeli military.
"We worked with impressive success to block Iran's military entrenchment in Syria," Netanyahu said, addressing Eisenkot. "In this framework, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) attacked Iranian and Hezbollah targets hundreds of times."
Netanyahu emphasized the actions that Israel took against the manufacture of "precision weapons" by Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militia in Lebanon, noting the ongoing Operation Northern Shield to destroy tunnels crossing from southern Lebanon into northern Israel which according to Israel were built by the Hezbollah.
"We took action against Hamas tunnels on the Gaza border. We thwarted hundreds of terrorist attacks in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) and we carried out very many other actions, open and covert," he said.
According to Syrian reports, Israeli fighter jets carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria over the weekend, striking several targets including a weapon facility.
Israel has mostly kept silent on its actions against Iranian targets in Syria, including strikes of Iranian weapon convoys delivered to Israel's arch-foe, Hezbollah, fearing such comments might trigger an escalation.
