Explosions rock Syrian capital, with no immediate word on source or targets

State media and local residents say repeated blasts heard before dawn in Damascus; war monitor says sites involved were weapons warehouses of Iran-backed militias

By AP and ToI Staff Today, 7:46 am

Illustrative: A Syrian national flag waves as vehicles move on a bridge during rush hour, in Damascus, Syria, on Feb. 28, 2016. (Hassan Ammar/AP)

DAMASCUS, Syria — The sound of repeated explosions could be heard in the area around the Syrian capital before dawn on Sunday, state media and Damascus residents said.

There was no immediate statement from government officials on the source or target of the attack, but similar incidents in the past have usually been attributed to Israeli airstrikes, with Syrian air defenses responding to shoot down the missiles.

The latest such incident was on August 7, when Syrian state media reported that Israeli airstrikes hit areas around Damascus, killing at least four Syrian army soldiers. Another four soldiers were wounded in the alleged Israeli sortie at around 2:20 a.m. and there was unspecified property damage, Syria’s state-run SANA media outlet reported.

SANA said at the time that Syrian air defenses managed to knock down “some” of the Israeli missiles. Syria regularly claims to intercept Israeli projectiles, though military analysts doubt such assertions.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition-linked war monitor, said those strikes targeted weapons and munitions warehouses and positions of Iran-backed militias around Damascus.

Israel, which has vowed to stop Iranian entrenchment next door, has purportedly carried out hundreds of strikes on targets in government-controlled parts of neighboring Syria in recent years, but it rarely acknowledges them. It has admitted to conducting sorties against Iran-backed groups attempting to gain a foothold in the country.

The Israeli military 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.

In July, fighter jets reportedly carried out strikes against targets in Damascus, wounding two soldiers. Early the same month, Israel attacked a Syrian air defense battery after a missile launched from the system earlier in the night exploded in Israeli airspace.

Israel has also reportedly targeted the international airports in Damascus and the northern Syrian city of Aleppo several times over the past few years, often putting it out of commission.

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