Eleven people were killed in alleged Israeli airstrikes near Damascus on Monday night, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
The strikes reportedly killed seven Iranian-backed militants of non-Syrian nationalities and three Syrian soldiers, according to SOHR. A civilian woman was killed by shrapnel in the strikes as well.
The state news agency SANA cited a military source as saying that only two people were killed, and seven were injured. The agency said a civilian woman had been killed and her husband injured in the blast. It was not immediately clear if she was among the two deaths initially reported by the military source, who had said that seven soldiers were wounded.
While Syrian officials are accusing Israel of being behind the attack, the IDF has not confirmed the attack. IDF spokesperson Hadi Zilberman told KAN Reshet Bet radio on Tuesday that "the IDF is working to secure strategic objectives with a series of operations, especially in the northern sector."
Israel has repeatedly attacked Iranian targets in Syria and those of allied militias, including Lebanon's Hezbollah.
“The IDF sees the Syrian regime as responsible for all operations carried out in its territory and will continue to act with determination against all attacks on the sovereignty of the State of Israel,” the IDF said following the incident at the time.
Israel has destroyed one-third of Syrian air defenses in the past two years, and close to a thousand surface-to-air missiles have been launched towards Israel Air Force jets during missions for its “war-between-wars” campaign targeting Iranian infrastructure in the war-torn country.
Israel has been carrying out its war-between-war campaign against Iran since 2013, striking thousands of targets in Syria, and according to foreign reports in neighboring Iraq, in order to prevent the smuggling of advanced weaponry to Hezbollah in Lebanon and the entrenchment of its forces in Syria where they could easily act against Israel.
The strikes over the past year have been targeting Iranian infrastructure and its presence on the ground to prevent Iran from embedding itself in Syria, and compromise Israel’s freedom of operation.
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