ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Five Syrian soldiers were injured when an Israeli missile strike targeted Sunday the central Homs province, Syrian state media (SANA) reported, with the latest strike being the third of its kind in less than 48 hours. “At about 00:35 in the morning, the Israeli enemy carried out an air aggression from the direction northeast of Beirut, targeting some points in the city of Homs and its countryside,” SANA cited a military source as saying, adding that Syrian air defenses successfully intercepted a number of the projectiles. The strikes inflicted wounds on five Syrian army soldiers and caused material damages. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said that the strikes targeted positions of the Syrian army and Iranian-backed forces in Homs province. Israel rarely comments on airstrikes attributed to it in Syria but it has repeatedly warned that it would not stand idle in the face of an increased Iranian presence in Syria. Another Israeli missile strike on Friday killed a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in Syria, initiating a strong response from the IRGC who vowed it would retaliate. A day prior, an Israeli strike in the vicinity of the capital Damascus injured at least two soldiers of the Syrian army. The latest attack marks the ninth Israeli missile strike on Syria since the start of the year and the seventh in March. Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on regime-controlled areas of Syria throughout its 11-year civil war, often claiming to strike pro-Iran militias, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah group which supports the Syrian army.
