(Damascus) Three Syrian soldiers were killed and three injured in Israeli strikes on Sunday, the official Syrian news agency Sana reported.
Posted at 4:19 p.m.
“The Israeli enemy carried out a strike with several missiles […] targeting sites around Damascus. This coincides with another attack […]targeting sites south of Tartous,” on the coast, the agency reported, citing a military source.
“Three soldiers are dead and three wounded,” it says.
Shortly before, Sana had announced the interception by the Syrian air defense of “hostile missiles in the sky of Tartous and above the Qalamoun mountain range near the Lebanese border”.
Israel did not react immediately.
Since the start of the war in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in its neighbor, targeting positions of the Syrian army, Iranian forces and Lebanese Hezbollah, allies of the Syrian regime.
The Jewish state rarely comments on its strikes against Syria, but says it will not let Iran extend its influence to Israel’s borders.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) has confirmed that three soldiers were killed and three injured in a strike on an air defense base in the province of Tartous, where pro-Iranian militias are active.
According to the same source, the targeted site is located eight kilometers south of Tartous, which is home to a major Russian naval base.
According to the OSDH, “missiles probably belonging to the regime’s air defense landed in the areas of Al-Qoutayfah and Qalamoun”, in the province of Damascus not far from the Lebanese border.
On Friday, two civilians were injured in Israeli shellfire on the province of Quneitra, in the south of the country.
Triggered by the repression of pro-democracy demonstrations, the war in Syria has claimed around 500,000 lives, devastated the country’s infrastructure and displaced millions of people.