Israel struck what it said were Iranian targets in Syria early yesterday in response to missile fire it blamed on Iran, sparking concerns of an escalation after a monitor reported 11 fighters killed.
Israel announced the strikes against facilities it said belonged to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force as they were occurring, continuing its recent practice of speaking more openly about such raids.
It said that the strikes were in response to a medium-range, surface-to-surface missile the Quds Force fired from Syria at the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Sunday, which Israeli air defenses intercepted.
Photo: Reuters / Syrian Arab News Agency
“We saw that as an unacceptable attack by the Iranian troops — not proxies, not Shiite militias, not Syrian forces — Iranian troops firing an Iranian-made missile from the vicinity of Damascus towards sovereign Israel,” Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus told reporters.
Israel said the targets included munitions stores, a site at Damascus International Airport that was allegedly the Quds Force’s main logistics hub in the country, an Iranian intelligence installation and an Iranian military training camp.
It said it also hit Syrian air defense batteries in response to dozens of missiles fired from them.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said at least 11 pro-regime fighters, including two Syrians, were killed.
Russia, which like Iran is a key backer of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war, said the Israeli strikes killed four Syrian soldiers and wounded six, while damaging Damascus airport infrastructure.
The observatory said that airstrikes and ground-to-ground missiles hit targets around the capital, including near the Damascus airport, as well as near the Thaala military airport in Sweida Province to the south of the capital.
The targets included weapons depots belonging to the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah and Iranian fighters, it added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters on Sunday that “we have a permanent policy: to strike at the Iranian entrenchment in Syria and hurt whoever tries to hurt us.”
Netanyahu and other Israeli officials have been speaking more openly about the nation’s strikes in Syria in recent days, which some analysts partly attribute to the prime minister wanting to burnish his security credentials ahead of April 9 elections.
However, others say it carries a strategic military purpose as well.
“If you want to make clear to the other side that you are determined to prevent something, either you escalate the operation — more targets, more sophisticated — or you say in public I am doing it, meaning I am ready to take the risk,” former Israeli national security adviser Yaakov Amidror said.
“Israel, instead of escalating, decided to make it public,” he said.
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