Syria
Syrian air defenses respond to Israeli missiles targeting south of the capital Damascus in earlier strike on July 20, 2020. Photo: AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Syrian air defense intercepted Israeli missiles south of the capital on Monday evening, causing no casualties, a military source told Syria’s state media.
“The Israeli enemy launched an aerial act of aggression from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting some sites south of Damascus,” SANA cited a military source as saying. The source added that only material damages were reported as a result.
The missiles targeting the southern Damascus countryside where Lebanese Hezbollah and Syrian air defense units are located, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). The watchdog added that this marked the 14th Israeli attack targeting Syrian territory so far this year.
Last month, SOHR reported that three Syrian army officers were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Iranian weapon depots near Damascus.
The Israeli military did not comment on the Syrian reports of Israeli attacks in the vicinity of Damascus.
In early March, state media reported that an Israeli attack over the Syrian capital killed two soldiers and wounded six others, prompting calls from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to avenge the killings. On March 13, the IRGC fired a dozen missiles towards Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region, claiming it targeted Israeli bases in revenge.
Israel frequently carries out strikes in Syria, targeting Iran-affiliated militias, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah group which supports the Syrian army, in what it says is an effort to prevent them from securing further ground along its borders.
Although Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes on regime-controlled areas of Syria over the course of its 10-year civil war, it rarely acknowledges them.
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