(Damascus) Five Syrian soldiers were injured on Sunday after midnight in an airstrike attributed to Israel near Homs in central Syria, the official Syrian news agency SANA reported.
It is the third Israeli strike in Syria in more than three days, after Damascus was targeted on two consecutive nights, on March 30 and 31, by Jewish state airstrikes, the first injuring two Syrian soldiers.
“Today at around 12:35 a.m. (5:35 p.m. EST), the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial assault from northeast Beirut targeting positions in the city of Homs (center, editor’s note) and his province,” SANA said on Sunday, citing a military source.
The source added that several missiles were intercepted by the Syrian air defense, reporting five soldiers injured and material damage.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), Israeli missiles targeted several military positions of Syrian regime and Iranian-affiliated forces in Homs, where explosions were heard and a fire broke out in a research center in particular.
The NGO, which has an extensive network of sources in the country at war, reported “certain information” concerning the dead and injured, adding that ambulances were heading to the scene of the attack.
The director of the Observatory, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP that in addition to the five wounded Syrian soldiers, several fighters affiliated with Iran and present in the research center were killed during the strikes.
Seven raids in one month
On March 31, Tehran announced the death in Syria of an officer of the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, in the Israeli raid targeting the Syrian capital on Friday after midnight.
But according to the OSDH, the “first rank” officer was killed during the raid which targeted Damascus on Thursday after midnight, during which “four other Iranian officers were killed”.
Israel has carried out seven airstrikes in Syria this month, according to the OSDH.
In addition to the two raids in Damascus this week, Israel notably struck twice the airport of Aleppo, a city in the north of the country where groups under the control of Iran and its allies have great influence.
A first raid killed three people on March 7, and the second caused material damage on March 22.
On February 19, 15 people were killed in an Israeli strike on Damascus, which targeted a neighborhood housing the headquarters of several security services, according to the OSDH.
Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in neighboring Syria against regime positions as well as Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces, allies of Damascus and sworn enemies of Israel. He rarely comments on strikes on a case-by-case basis, but says he wants to prevent Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep.
Syria is ravaged by a civil war, triggered by the repression in 2011 of pro-democracy demonstrations and which has become more complex over the years with the intervention of several countries and foreign armed groups.