(Damascus) Israel carried out airstrikes in Syria near Damascus, injuring two Syrian soldiers, the official Syrian agency Sana reported overnight.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH), this is the twentieth Israeli raid in 2023.
“Around 00:25 at dawn, the Israeli enemy carried out an air assault with bursts of missiles from the north of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting certain positions in the vicinity of Damascus,” Sana said, citing a military source. .
“The attack injured two soldiers and caused material damage,” adds the agency, which says that most of the missiles were intercepted by Syrian air defense systems.
Sana published photos and videos presented as being those of an intercepted missile.
According to the UK-based OSDH, the strikes targeted military positions near the airport in the city of Dimas and the Beirut-Damascus highway west of the capital, in Saboura, where members of the Fourth Division, the elite unit of the Syrian army.
The NGO, which has an extensive network of sources in the war-torn country, says the strikes targeted pro-Iranian Hezbollah warehouses, sparking fires, with no reported casualties.
In early July, according to the OSDH, Israel had also targeted Hezbollah sites and ammunition depots in the northeastern outskirts of Homs (center), killing a member of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, the ideological army of the Republic. Islamic Republic of Iran, and injuring four others.
Israel had also targeted an air defense base in Qadmus, Tartous province, according to the same source.
Since the start of the war in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against Syrian regime positions as well as Iranian and Hezbollah forces, allies of Damascus and sworn enemies of Israel.
Israel rarely comments on these strikes on a case-by-case basis, but says it wants to prevent Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep.