Israel Launches Air Strikes Against Targets Near Damascus

Syria says Israel carries out strike, claims to intercept missiles

Syrian state media on Friday evening said that Israel launched a strike against targets near Damascus and claimed the country’s air defenses downed a number of missiles.

“Aerial defenses detected hostile targets coming from the direction of Quneitra and dealt with them,” the official SANA news agency quoted a military source saying, referring to a Syrian town in the Golan Heights bordering Israel.

Reports in Syria said there were loud explosions south of Damascus, the capital.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported several explosions in the Al-Kiswah area outside the city, in the vicinity of Iranian and Hezbollah storage facilities and air defense batteries.

There was no response from the Israel Defense Forces, which rarely comments on reported strikes.

The Israeli military has acknowledged carrying out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria in recent years on targets linked to Iran, which is backing President Bashar Assad’s regime in the Syrian civil war. Israel accuses Iran of seeking to set up a military presence in Syria that could be used to threaten the Jewish state.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, reported three explosions southwest of Damascus. It added that it was not immediately clear if the explosions were caused by Israeli airstrikes or surface-to-surface missiles.

The Observatory’s chief, Rami Abdurrahman, told The Associated Press that the strikes targeted the area of el-Kiswah, which is home to positions and storage sites for Iranian and Lebanon’s Hezbollah forces allied with Syria’s government.

Syrian state media says projectiles fired from Israeli territory

Israel’s Air Force struck targets outside Syria’s capital of Damascus late Friday night after residents reported loud blasts. 

Syrian state media SANA quoted military sources as saying that regime air defenses intercepted “enemy targets” coming from the “direction of Quientra.” 

The state television channel showed footage of the night sky with a point of light firing up into it and the sound of shooting, and reported that air defenses had brought down some objects. It did not immediately report casualties or material damage

According to pro-opposition reports, the strikes targeted the First Division HQ of the Syrian Army near al-Kiswe, south of Damascus.

Other local reports said that the strikes targeted Iranian arms depots.

Israeli officials have repeatedly voiced concerns over Iran’s entrenchment in Syria and the smuggling of sophisticated weaponry to Hezbollah from Tehran to Lebanon via Syria, stressing that both are red-lines for the Jewish State.

In an effort to prevent sophisticated weaponry from reaching Hezbollah, Israel frequently carries out airstrikes against Iran and its allies in Syria. In January Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel has a set policy of preventing Iran's entrenchment in Syria. 

In April Israeli planes targeted a military position near the province of Hama in Syria, but Syrian air defenses intercepted and downed some of the rockets, Syrian state television reported.