State news agency reports air defenses engaging Israeli missiles over Syrian capital; no immediate reports of injuries
Israel launched airstrikes against unknown targets near the Syrian capital Damascus late Monday, Syria’s state news agency reported.
There was no comment from the Israel Defense Forces, in line with its policy of not generally commenting on air raids in foreign countries.
The SANA news agency said Syrian air defenses were engaging the Israeli missiles over Damascus. Syria regularly claims to intercept Israeli missiles, though military analysts doubt such assertions.
There were no immediate reports of injuries in the attack and it was unclear what sites had been targeted.
As a rule, Israel’s military does not comment on specific strikes in Syria, but has admitted to conducting hundreds of sorties against Iran-backed groups attempting to gain a foothold in the country.
The IDF says it also attacks arms shipments believed to be bound for those groups, chief among them Lebanon’s Hezbollah. Additionally, airstrikes attributed to Israel have repeatedly targeted Syrian air defense systems.
But in a rare comment, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi confirmed last week tha the Israeli Air Force carried out an airstrike in early November on a convoy allegedly carrying Iranian arms near the Syria-Iraq border.
The last strike in Syria attributed to Israel was on December 11, when a Syrian military site was targeted. Hours later, the IDF dropped threatening pamphlets in southern Syria, warning Syrian soldiers to stop cooperating with the Iran-backed Hezbollah in the area.
