Syria accuses Israel of airstrikes on targets outside Damascus

Several loud explosions heard in the Syrian capital as regime air defenses activated against strike.

Syrian state media accused Israel’s Air Force of launching a strike against targets outside Syria’s capital of Damascus late Friday night and claimed the country’s air defenses intercepted a number of missiles.

“Aerial defenses detected hostile targets coming from the direction of Quneitra and intercepted them,” a military source was quoted by Syria’s SANA news agency as saying.

The state television channel showed footage of the night sky with a point of light firing up into it and the sound of explosions.

According to pro-opposition reports, the strikes targeted the First Division HQ of the Syrian Army near al-Kiswe, south of Damascus. The site, some 50 kilometers from the border with Israel, is in the vicinity of Iranian and Hezbollah storage sites and air defense batteries.

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

There was no comment on the strikes by Israel which rarely comments on alleged Israel Air Force operations on the northern front, but Israeli officials have repeatedly voiced concerns over Iran’s presence 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.

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.

IAF jets are believed to have carried out dozens of attacks in al-Kiswah and Damascus International Airport as part of its effort to prevent Iranian entrenchment in the war-torn country.

In December an Israeli official confirmed that Israel had carried out airstrikes against Iranian targets near the Syrian capital on Christmas day, hitting an arms depot and several military positions including air defense facilities. In response to the strikes, Syria activated their air defense systems, causing Israel’s air defense system to activate against a Syrian anti-aircraft missile.

Fragments of the anti-aircraft missile were found in an open area in Israel’s Golan Heights.

A month later IAF jets struck the site again. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the jets targeted missile depots belonging to Hezbollah in the Al-Kiswah area as well as the Damascus airport. Other local reports said that the strikes had destroyed Iranian cargo planes at the airport outside the capital.

In April Israeli planes targeted Iranian surface-to-surface missile factory in a Syrian base in the country’s Masyaf in the province of Hama from Lebanese airspace around 02.30AM. SANA reported that regime air defenses intercepted and downed some of the rockets.

While SANA said the interception of the Israeli missiles resulted in the destruction of several buildings and the wounding of three “fighters,” according to a report by the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), Iranian “elements” and pro-Iranian militants were killed and another 17 were injured.

SOHR reported that the strike targeted a Syrian military college in the town and two buildings used by Iranian forces in nearby villages — a development center for medium-range missiles in Zawi and a training camp in Sheikh Ghadban.

Satellite images released by Israeli intelligence firm ImageSat Intl. (ISI) showed the complete destruction of the factory.

“The main industrial structures were completely destroyed, including the main hangar and the adjacent three production hangers and buildings. The rest of the structures were affected and damaged by the blast,” ISI said, adding that they “assess that all the elements and/or equipment which were inside are completely destroyed as well.”