Israeli jets carry out airstrikes against sites near Aleppo, Syrian state media says

Israel launched airstrikes against targets near the northwestern Syrian city of Aleppo on Monday night, Syrian state media reported.

Syria’s state news agency, SANA, said the Israeli Air Force warplanes targeted sites on the outskirts of Aleppo. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

Details about the targets and the extent of the damage were not immediately available. Footage circulating online showed explosions in the night sky.

SANA reported that Syrian air defenses responded to the Israeli incursion, claiming to have downed several missiles. Syria regularly claims to intercept Israeli missiles, though military analysts doubt such assertions.

While Israel’s military does not as a rule comment on specific strikes in Syria, it has admitted to conducting hundreds of sorties against Iran-backed groups attempting to gain a foothold in the country, over the last decade.

The IDF says it also attacks arms shipments believed to be bound for those groups, chief among them Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy. Additionally, airstrikes attributed to Israel have repeatedly targeted Syrian air defense systems.

العدوا ن استهدف محيط مطار حلب الدولي وبلدة السفيرة في ريف حلب الجنوبي pic.twitter.com/39BbS8135M

— Fouad Khreiss (@fouadkhreiss) May 1, 2023

There have been a number of alleged Israeli strikes in Syria in recent weeks, including against targets near the western city of Homs on Saturday, and sites near the border with the Golan Heights on April 24 and April 19.

Israel is alleged to have carried out a number of strikes in Syria last month, including one that killed two members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. After that strike, a suspected Iranian drone launched from Syria was brought down over Israeli airspace.

And several days later, six rockets were launched from southern Syria at the Golan Heights in two separate barrages hours apart, with three landing in Israeli territory, the military said. The IDF responded with artillery strikes in response to the rocket attack.

On Friday, Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian visited Lebanon’s border with Israel, taking a tour of the area with Hezbollah and Lebanese parliamentarians, after a meeting with Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah.

During the visit, Amir-Abdollahian predicted that “positive developments in the region will lead to the collapse of the Zionist entity.”

Agencies contributed to this report.