Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted Wednesday that Israel sent a message to Turkey against setting up a base in Syria, tacitly acknowledging a strike the day before.

“We will not tolerate a Turkish military entrenchment moving southward, because it threatens us,” Netanyahu told an army radio podcast.

He said that Israel had initially sent a message “in general terms” against a Turkish military presence at an airfield near Aleppo, close to the Turkish border.

“Apparently they didn’t hear it, so we made sure they understood it more clearly,” he said.

Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday stopped short of claiming Israeli responsibility for the strike, but said that Turkish forces had recently toured the base and warned that Israel would not tolerate a “threat” from a Turkish presence.

US Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack, who is also the US pointman on Syria, blamed Israel for the attack and condemned it.

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