DAMASCUS, Oct 5: Syria said on Sunday an Israeli airstrike had targeted a civilian site near Damascus in a “grave escalation” of tensions in the Middle East.

Israel had said the raid was aimed at a training camp for “terror groups”.

In a letter to the United Nations seen by Reuters, Foreign Minister Farouq al-Shara said Syria was capable of deterring Israel but would exercise restraint over the raid. He also called for an immediate Security Council session to discuss the Israeli action.

It was the deepest military strike by Israel inside Syria since the Yom Kippur war exactly 30 years ago.

“The Israeli air force launched on Sunday morning a missile attack on a civilian area inside Syrian territory, in the village of Ain as-Saheb, which caused material damage,” Mr Shara said.

He said the Security Council, of which Syria is currently one of 10 non-veto holding members, was “the adequate framework to confront this dangerous development, to condemn it and ensure that it won’t happen again.”

“Syria restrained itself in the strongest possible manner,” he said in his message, but added that Damascus was capable of “creating a balance of dissuasive resistance forces and will force Israel to rethink its calculations.”

He also said that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was in charge of a “government of war”.

In Beirut, the president of the Syrian parliament commission on foreign relations said Israel would “pay the price of its aggression.”

The raid is “a flagrant violation of the disengagement agreement” of 1974, as well as “international accords and the 4th Geneva Convention on Human Rights” on civilians, Suliman Haddad told Lebanese television.

BEIRUT: Meanwhile, a Palestinian official in Beirut said two guards were wounded in a raid by Israeli warplanes on a “facility” of a radical Palestinian group near the Syrian capital Damascus on Sunday,