ISRAEL VS. SYRIA

Independent: Israel launches strikes on Syria in retaliation for bomb attack

In a potentially dangerous widening of the Middle East conflict, Israel carried out air strikes yesterday near Damascus, the deepest attack inside Syria for 30 years.

Israel claimed the target of its attack was a training camp used by the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, and said the air strike was in retaliation for a suicide bombing by Islamic Jihad which killed 19 people, four of them children, in a restaurant in Haifa on Saturday.

The air strike on Syria was the first time since the start of the intifada three years ago that the conflict has spread beyond Israel and the borders of the occupied territories.