Israel Strikes Syria Again, Accuses US Envoy of Inaccurate Comments

DAMASCUS: Israel carried out a fresh strike in Syria on Saturday and lambasted US envoy Tom Barrack for criticising an earlier attack on an air base in the northwest, which Israel has accused Turkey of seeking to use. US envoy for Syria Tom Barrack on Tuesday slammed Israel's attack on the disused military air base that day as an "unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability". On Friday, in an interview with influencer Mario Nawfal, Barrack said the strike may have been intended to provoke a conflict with Turkey, prompting Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz to hit back on Saturday, calling the remarks "full of inaccuracies". Since the December 2024 overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria and has sent troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone that for decades had separated Israeli and Syrian forces in the Golan Heights. Katz wrote on X on Saturday that Israel had passed on "intelligence information to the authorised parties in the United States" before the strike on Tuesday. He added that Barrack's comments were "full of inaccuracies and positions that contradict the stance of US President (Donald) Trump himself regarding the Golan Heights", after Barrack called the territory "occupied". Israel captured most of the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli War and later annexed the areas under its control, in a move only recognised by the United States and, this month, also Colombia.