Israeli air raids kill 10 Syrian troops

BEIRUT, Jun 23 (agencies): Israeli air raids on several Syrian military facilities overnight killed at least 10 troops and destroyed an army command center, an activist group said Monday.   

The Syrian government has not commented on the airstrikes, which the Israeli military said hit nine targets inside Syria before dawn. The raids were in response to a cross-border attack the previous day that killed an Israeli civilian.   

The director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdurrahman, said the Israeli strikes destroyed two tanks, two artillery batteries and the headquarters of Syria's 90th brigade.   

Meanwhile:  The last of Syria's declared chemical weapons have been shipped from the war-torn country and are en route for destruction at sea, the world's chemical weapons watchdog said on Monday.

"As we speak, the ship (carrying the last chemicals) has just left the port (of Latakia)," Ahmet Uzumcu, head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, said at a press conference in The Hague.

"Removing the stockpile of precursor and other chemicals has been a fundamental condition in the programme to eliminate Syria's chemical weapons programme," Uzumcu said.

Syria had previously shipped out 92 percent of its stockpile of chemical weapons under the terms of a UN-backed and US-Russia brokered agreement last year.

But the remaining eight percent of the stockpile remained at one site and Damascus said it was unable to transport it to the port of Latakia because of security concerns.