CAIRO, July 15. /TASS/. The Syrian Foreign Ministry said that the country has a legitimate right to self-defense after Israeli aircraft began attacking the province of Al-Suwayda in the south of the Arab republic.

"In the face of an extremely dangerous aggression from Israel, Syria confirms that it has the legitimate right to self-defense and to defend its territories and people by all means provided for by international law," it said in a statement posted on the Syrian Foreign Ministry's social media page. The ministry added that Damascus "protects all Syrians without exception, especially members of the Druze community."

The Syrian Foreign Ministry called on residents of the city of Al-Suwayda to "rally around the Syrian army and not take part in any suspicious projects," without specifying which projects it meant.

On Tuesday, Israel attacked the positions of Syrian government forces and Arab tribal militias in the provinces of Al-Suwayda and Deraa in the south of the country with rockets at least four times.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz issued a statement on July 15, in which they indicated that they had ordered the army to attack the Syrian army forces deployed in the city of Al-Suwayda in southern Syria in support of the Syrian Druze. After the change of power in Damascus at the end of 2024, the Israeli government has repeatedly expressed its support for the Druze living in the territory of the neighboring Arab republic and expressed its intention, if necessary, to assist them in self-defense in the face of possible destabilization of the situation.

The Druze are an Arabic-speaking ethnic and religious group whose representatives live in Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan. There are 700,000 Druze in Syria, the third-largest religious and ethnic minority after the Kurds and Alawites.