Syrian army command yesterday said that Israel fired rockets at a major military airbase outside Damascus and warned Jerusalem of repercussions of what it called a “flagrant” attack.
The explosions were heard in the Syrian capital and residents in the southwest suburbs saw a large plume of smoke rising from the area, while footage uploaded on social media showed flames leaping from parts of Mezze military airport’s compound.
Syrian state television quoted the army as saying several rockets were fired from an area near Lake Tiberias in northern Israel just after midnight and landed in the compound of the airbase, used by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s elite Republican Guards.
“Syrian army command and armed forces warn Israel of the repercussions of the flagrant attack and stresses its continued fight against [this] terrorism and amputate the arms of the perpetrators,” Syria’s army command said in a statement.
The statement did not disclose if there were any casualties, but said the rockets caused a fire.
Earlier, Syrian state television said several major explosions hit Mezze military airport’s compound and ambulances were rushed to the area.
Syrian government forces had used the base to fire rockets at former rebel-held areas in the capital’s suburbs.
Israel has targeted positions of Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah group inside Syria where the group, backed by Iran, is heavily involved in fighting alongside the Syrian army.
In November last year, the Syrian army said Israeli jets fired two missiles on an area west of the capital, close to the Damascus-Beirut highway, in an attack mounted from Lebanese air space.
Diplomatic sources say Israel has in the past few years targeted advanced weapons systems, including Russian-made anti-aircraft and Iranian-made missiles, and bombed the elite Syrian Fourth Armored Division base on Qasioun Mountain in the capital.
An airstrike in Syria in December 2015 killed a prominent Hezbollah leader, Samir Qantar.
Israel welcomed Qantar’s death, saying he was preparing attacks from Syrian soil, but stopped short of confirming responsibility for eliminating him.
Earlier that year, an Israeli airstrike in Syria killed six members of Hezbollah, including a commander and the son of the its late military chief Imad Moughniyah near the Golan Heights.
Israeli defense officials have voiced concern that Hezbollah’s experience in the Syrian civil war, where it has played a significant role and recently helped the Syrian army regain the eastern sector of the city of Aleppo, has strengthened it.
Rebels operating in the area have said Hezbollah’s major arms supply route into Damascus from the Lebanese border has been targeted on several occasions in recent years by airstrikes. This has included strikes on warehouses and convoys of weapons.
Damascus airport was also hit by airstrikes in 2013. Tel Aviv neither confirms nor denies involvement in striking targets inside Syria.
Israel has been largely unscathed by the Syrian civil war, with only sporadic incidents of stray shells falling on its territory.
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