The foreign ministry summoned the head of the UN force in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights to deliver the protest a day after Israel hit what Syria said was a military research center and diplomats said was a weapons convoy heading for Lebanon.

“Syria holds Israel and those who protect it in the Security Council fully responsible for the results of this aggression and affirms its right to defend itself, its land and sovereignty,” Syrian television quoted it as saying.

The ministry said it considered Wednesday’s Israeli attack to be a violation of a 1974 military disengagement agreement which followed their last major war, and demanded the U.N. Security Council condemn it unequivocally.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed “grave concern…The Secretary-General calls on all concerned to prevent tensions or their escalation,” his office said, adding that international law and sovereignty should be respected.

Israel has maintained total silence over the attack, as it did in 2007 when it bombed a suspected Syrian nuclear site – an attack which passed without Syrian military retaliation.

In Beirut on Thursday Syria’s ambassador said Damascus could take “a surprise decision to respond to the aggression of the Israeli warplanes.” He gave no details but said Syria was “defending its sovereignty and its land”.

Diplomats, Syrian rebels and security sources said Israeli jets bombed a convoy near the Lebanese border on Wednesday, apparently hitting weapons destined for Hizbullah. Syria denied the reports, saying the target was a military research center northwest of Damascus and 8 miles from the border.

Hizbullah, which has supported Assad as he battles an armed uprising in which 60,000 people have been killed, said Israel was trying to thwart Arab military power and vowed to stand by its ally.

“Hizbullah expresses its full solidarity with Syria’s leadership, army and people,” said the group. Hizbullah further called for “wide-scale condemnation from the international community,” the Jerusalem Post cites them as saying in a statement.

Russia, which has blocked Western efforts to put pressure on Syria at the United Nations, said any Israeli air strike would amount to unacceptable military interference.

“If this information is confirmed, we are dealing with unprovoked attacks on targets on the territory of a sovereign country, which blatantly violates the U.N. Charter and is unacceptable, no matter the motives,” Russia’s foreign ministry said.

Iranian deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdullahian said the attack “demonstrates the shared goals of terrorists and the Zionist regime,” Fars news agency reported. 

An aide to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Saturday Iran would consider any attack on Syria as an attack on itself. Iran also said that Israel would face “serious consequences” for the attack.

In battle-torn Damascus, residents doubted Syria would fight back. One mother of five said she had heard retaliation would come later. “They always say that. They’ll retaliate, but later, not now. Always later,” she said, and laughed.

“The last thing we need now is Israeli fighter jets to add to our daily routine. As if we don’t have enough noise and firing keeping us awake at night.”

Details of Wednesday’s strike remain sketchy and, in parts, contradictory. Syria said Israeli warplanes, flying low to avoid detection by radar, crossed into its airspace from Lebanon and struck the Jamraya military research center. 

But the diplomats and rebels said the jets hit a weapons convoy heading from Syria to Lebanon and the rebels said they – not Israel – attacked Jamraya with mortars.

One former Western envoy to Damascus said the discrepancy between the accounts might be explained by Jamraya’s proximity to the border and the fact that Israeli jets hit vehicles inside the complex as well as a building. 

The force of the dawn attack shook the ground, waking nearby residents from their slumber with up to a dozen blasts, two sources in the area said.

Israeli newspapers quoted foreign media on Thursday for reports on the attack. Journalists in Israel are required to submit articles on security and military issues to the censor, which has the power to block any publication of material it deems could compromise state security.

Syrian state television said two people were killed in the raid on Jamraya, which lies in the 15-mile strip between Damascus and the Lebanese border. It described it as a scientific research center “aimed at raising the level of resistance and self-defense”.

Diplomatic sources from three countries told Reuters that chemical weapons were believed to be stored at Jamraya, and that it was possible that the convoy was near the large site when it came under attack. However, there was no suggestion that the vehicles themselves had been carrying chemical weapons.

Maj. Gen. Abdul-Aziz Jassem al-Shallal, one of the most senior Syrian army officers to have defected, told The Associated Press by telephone from Turkey that no chemical or non-conventional weapons are at the site.

The attack  came “after terrorist groups made several failed attempts in the past months to take control of the site,” an army official statement added, using the term the Assad’s government uses for rebel fighters.

The raid followed warnings from Israel that it was ready to act to prevent the revolt against Assad leading to Syria’s chemical weapons and modern rockets reaching either his Hizbullah allies or his Islamist enemies. A regional security source said Israel’s target was weaponry given by Assad’s military to fellow Iranian ally Hizbullah.

Israel this week echoed concerns in the United States about Syrian chemical weapons, but its officials say a more immediate worry is that the civil war could see weapons that are capable of denting its massive superiority in airpower and tanks reaching Hizbullah; the group fought Israel in 2006 and remains a more pressing threat than its Syrian and Iranian sponsors.

The regional officials said Israel had been planning in the days leading up to the air raid to hit a shipment of weapons bound for Hizbullah.

They said the shipment included sophisticated Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, which would be strategically “game-changing” in the hands of Hizbullah. 

Syria denied that such a shipment had been taking place, however.  

The Israeli strike is most likely a ploy to draw Syrians into an armed conflict with IDF forces, Professor Ibrahim Alloush from the Zaytouneh University in Amman told RT.

“We know for a fact that the Israelis are taking advantage of the fact that the Syrian army is busy fighting off a NATO-instigated revolt inside Syria. And maybe there’s a good chance that the purpose of this attack was to (push) the Syrian army to engage the Israelis so as to lift pressure on the Syrian opposition and to allow it to achieve some gains.”

While Alloush believes Damascus will unquestionably retaliate, it does not mean Syria will launch an airstrike against Israeli targets.

“There are ways the Syrians can retaliate that do not involve direct attacks…The Syrians have been keenly aware of the imbalance of power between them and the Israelis, Israel being supported by NATO and the United States. They will avoid direct confrontation as much as possible.”

Later on Thursday, Syria filed an official complaint to the UN over the Israeli strike.

Although Israel and Syria are technically still at war, the ministry’s official complaint evoked a 1974 disengagement agreement between the neighbor, state news agency SANA said.

The ministry said Israel “and the states that protect it at the UN Security Council” are responsible for the air strike, and “affirms Syria’s right to defend itself and its territory and sovereignty.”

The ministry called on “all the competent UN bodies to take the necessary steps given this grave Israeli violation, and to guarantee that it will not happen again.”

The ministry denounced “the failure of the Security Council to take responsibility to prevent this grave Israeli attack, which poses serious threats to stability in the Middle East and security in the world.”

-Reuters, TAAN, Al-Akhbar, RT