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Report: Israel attacks Hezbollah weapons cache in Syria

Reports on alleged Israeli strikes against Hezbollah in Syria continue to surface. Hezbollah and the Assad regime deny such an incident occurred. 

By: Aryeh Savir, World Israel News

The Israeli Air Force (IAF) reportedly attacked a munitions storage south of Damascus at the Mount Mana area near the roads leading to Dara’a on Wednesday night, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported.

According to the SOHR report, an organization which monitors the civil war in Syria, the location was targeted by three missile strikes which caused physical damage, but there was no available information about the size of the damage or on casualties, and it is unknown whether members of the Hezbollah terror organization were inside the location or not.

Witnesses to the explosion reported seeing secondary explosions, possibly indicating that weapons stored at the site exploded due to the attack.

Both the Assad regime and Hezbollah’s Al-Manar TV denied that such an incident occurred.

The Israeli military did not comment on the report, as has been its policy in the past when such reports have surfaced.

There have been several previous reports of IAF airstrikes on Hezbollah targets in Syria, primarily against weapons shipments. Many of the weapons shipments are financed by Iran.

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Israel has repeatedly vowed to prevent Hezbollah from acquiring game-changing weaponry and has warned that any such attempts would be met with a strong Israeli response.

In December, Israel’s Foreign Ministry Director-General Dore Gold confirmed that the IDF has thwarted attempts to transfer advanced weapons to Hezbollah in Lebanon. This was the first time an Israeli official has openly made such a statement.

“We in Israel did not take sides and did not interfere in the Syrian war,” Gold. “We have interests that we will protect, and red lines. When we saw that there are those who wanted to transfer Russian missiles from Syrian warehouses to Hezbollah, we had to disrupt that activity, and we will not allow it.”

Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu alluded to Israeli actions in Syria in an address earlier that month. “We operate in Syria from time to time to prevent it from becoming a second terror front against us,” he said.

“We are also acting, of course, to prevent the transfer of deadly weapons from Syria to Lebanon in particular, and we will continue to do so,” he added.