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Israel bombs Islamic Jihad camp inside Syria

By Atul Aneja

MANAMA Oct. 5 . For the first time in over two decades, Israeli warplanes on Sunday attacked an alleged Palestinian extremist camp, just 15 km from the Syrian capital of Damascus. Israel said its planes targeted the Ein Sahev camp claiming that it was used as a training facility by the extremist Palestinian group, Islamic Jihad (IJ). The air raid was apparently in retaliation to Saturday's suicide attack by a Palestinian woman wrapped in explosives at a restaurant in the northern Israeli city of Haifa. Nineteen persons were killed and over 50 others were injured in the attack. IJ claimed responsibility for the attack.

However, an agency report quoting a commander of the Damascus-based radical Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) contradicted the Israeli claim by stating that the attacked camp was one of the group's abandoned bases and not an Islamic Jihad training site.

Abu Emad El-Refaei, an Islamic Jihad spokesman in Beirut, Lebanon, denied on the Al Jazeera television network that Syria was hosting any Islamic Jihad bases. An Israeli Government spokesman said that "Syria has been warned more than once by the United States that it should close all the facilities of the Islamic Jihad. Apparently it has not done so." He pointed out that after Saturday's incident, the Israeli Government had adopted the policy of going after the Islamic Jihad, "wherever they are."

An Israeli Army statement also accused Iran of funding and directing the Islamic Jihad. Analysts say that before the air raid on Syria, Israel has consistently campaigned for international diplomatic pressure on Syria and Iran. After the "regime change" in Iraq, Israel has begun to increase its focus on Syria, which it apprehends exercises considerable influence on the anti-Israel Hizbollah group, which has deployed along the Israel-Lebanon border. Israeli concerns about Iran have increased on account of Teheran's suspected nuclear weapons programme.

Reuters reports from United Nations:

The United Nations Security Council has called an urgent meeting for today at the request of Syria, which is asking the 15-member body to condemn Israel for attacking the alleged Palestinian training camp near Damascus, U.N. and Syrian officials announced. An official from the United States, which holds the rotating presidency of the Council this month, said a closed-door session would begin at 1:30 hrs.

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