Israeli aircraft struck the Abu al Duhur air base in Syria's Idlib province overnight Tuesday, hitting the runway and storage facilities with eight strikes. The base sits about 70 kilometres east of the Turkish border and has not operated since 2013, changing hands several times over the course of Syria's civil war.
Netanyahu's office said Israel and Syria had settled into an understood status quo, and that Damascus was on the verge of breaking it by letting Turkish forces deploy at the base. It said Syria had been warned repeatedly that such a move would threaten Israeli security, and that the strikes followed those warnings. No casualties were reported.
Turkey rejected the claim outright. A government statement called the allegation frivolous and said Israel was inventing pretexts to bomb its neighbours, denying that any Turkish forces were present at the base at all.
The clearest reaction came from Washington. US envoy Tom Barrack called the strikes an unnecessary escalation that does not advance regional stability, and said his office is working to set up a deconfliction mechanism between Israel, Turkey and Syria. He noted that Turkey had not been warned before the strikes, which leaves open the chance of a Turkish military response.