Syrian air defense batteries opened fire on “hostile Israel missiles” near Damascus Friday night, the official news agency SANA reported.
A military source told the news agency that “at 11:15 p.m. Israeli warplanes coming from the direction of the Galilee fired several missiles towards the vicinity of Damascus.”
The source claimed that air defenses intercepted “most” of the missiles and said a “ministry of transport warehouse at Damascus international airport” was hit. Another official told SANA traffic at the airport had not been disrupted.
An AFP correspondent in Damascus heard several loud explosions.
“Two areas hosting military positions of Iranian forces and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement have been targeted,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said.
These were near the airport and around the Kisweh area south of Damascus, the observatory said.
In an earlier report, SANA had spoken of Syrian air-defence batteries attacking “enemy targets.”
Israeli officials made no statement on Friday’s reports, but seldom comment on alleged strikes.
Israel has accused Iran of seeking to establish a military presence in Syria that could threaten Israeli security and attempting to transfer advanced weaponry to the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon.
The number of airstrikes in Syria attributed to Israel has dropped in recent months, after a Russian military plane was downed by Syrian air defenses during an Israeli attack on Latakia, killing all 15 servicemen aboard.
Russia blamed the Israeli military for that incident — a charge rejected by Jerusalem — and has supplied Syria with the advanced S-300 air defense system.
The S-300 systems were delivered to Syria late last year, but they are not yet believed to be in use, as the Syrian air defense teams still need to be trained to operate them.
Syrian air defense systems have been activated against a “number of hostile targets,” local media report, claiming that Israeli jets targeted Damascus airport but the damage was limited as most the missiles were intercepted.
A warehouse in the vicinity of Damascus International Airport was damaged in the apparent Israeli air raid, a military source told SANA, claiming that the jets fired “several missiles” from the direction of northern Israel. Syrian air defense systems were immediately activated to confront the “hostile missiles,” and managed to intercept “most” of them, the source claimed.
The damage from the strikes was “limited,” the news agency noted, without providing any details about possible casualties. No further details have yet been provided by the Syrian authorities.
In the past, Israeli forces repeatedly bombed sites in the vicinity of Damascus, claiming their right to attack ‘Iranian targets’ anywhere and at any time, but rarely admitting to having carried out such raids.
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