Death toll from Syria strikes rises: Foreign ministry

Syria's foreign ministry said in a statement that 16 people were killed in the Israeli strikes on central Syria on Sunday and 36 were wounded, six of them in critical conditions.

"[Israel's] persistence in its attacks on Syrian territory and other countries in the region, and its continuation of its brutal war on the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and its perpetration of the most horrific massacres and crimes of genocide against the Palestinians, only indicate the frantic pursuit of this bloody fascist entity for further escalation in the region and pushes it into dangerous slopes that will have dire consequences that cannot be predicted," the statement said.