(Damascus) Airstrikes attributed to Israel targeted the Syrian capital on Sunday evening. These are the first such strikes in nearly a month, Syrian state media reported.
Syrian air defenses responded to strikes in the vicinity of Damascus and shot down some of them, the official SANA news agency reported. The attack only caused “property damage”.
The latest alleged Israeli airstrike on Syria took place on May 2, targeting Aleppo International Airport in northern Syria. State media had reported that the attack killed a Syrian soldier and put the airport out of action.
There was no immediate statement from Israeli authorities regarding Sunday’s strikes on Damascus.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based opposition war watchdog, said Israeli missiles had targeted sites used by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, allied to the Syrian government, and that ambulances had transported people injured in the strikes.
The observatory specified that the attack was the 17e of Israel on Syrian territory since the beginning of the year.
Israel, which has pledged to end Iranian entrenchment in its neighbors, has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets in government-held parts of neighboring Syria in recent years but rarely acknowledges them.
However, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant claimed earlier this month in a speech at a security conference that Israel’s new government had dramatically increased the number of strikes against Iranian targets since then. taking office at the end of last year.
Last week, an Israeli military spokesman said in a statement that an Israeli drone carrying out a surveillance mission in Syrian airspace “came under small arms fire” and that Israeli forces had retaliated with machine gun fire.