Deputy prime minister condemns Israeli violation of Lebanese airspace

CAIRO — Lebanon’s defense minister Zeina Akar condemned an attack on Thursday night that saw Israeli military aircraft transiting Lebanese airspace to target locations in Syria. The attack “blatantly violated Lebanon’s airspace at low altitude, causing a state of panic among citizens,” Akar said.

Syrian air defenses confronted an “Israeli aggression” in the Damascus countryside on Thursday, Syrian state-owned Ekhbariya TV and state news agency SANA said.

A Syrian military source said in a statement “the Israeli enemy carried out an air aggression this evening with bursts of missiles from the direction of southeast Beirut” in Lebanon and “targeting some points in the vicinity of the city of Damascus and the vicinity of the city of Homs.”

The Israeli military declined comment on the reported strike in Syria.

The sound of aircraft could be heard in and around Beirut.

Akar said the attack violated UN Security Council resolution 1701 to resolve the 2006 Lebanon war and she called on the UN to deter Israel from carrying out airstrikes on Syria using Lebanese airspace. Akar said she had sent a complaint to the United Nations.

The Syrian statement said its air defenses “confronted the aggression’s missiles and shot down most of them, and the results of the aggression are now being audited.”

During the airstrike, a plane belonging to Lebanese carrier Middle East Airlines coming from Abu Dhabi had to hold in Syrian airspace for about 10 minutes before landing in Beirut, as did a plane from Turkey’s Pegasus airlines, said Fadi Alhassan, acting general manager for Lebanon’s civil aviation authority.