Syria claims Israeli aircraft carried out missile strikes on Damascus as explosions rock Syrian capital.
By World Israel News Staff
Explosions were heard in and around the Syrian capital city of Damascus Wednesday night, following an apparent Israeli airstrike that left two terrorists dead, according to a Syrian opposition group.
According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the explosions were heard in Damascus and Rif Dimash, and resulted both from missiles launched by Israeli aircraft and from Syrian anti-air missiles.
The Syrian military confirmed the explosions were the result of an Israeli airstrike, but downplayed the extent of the damage, claiming that there were no fatalities or injuries in the attack.
“At approximately 9:35 p.m. this evening, the Israeli enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting a number of points in the Damascus countryside,” an official from the Syrian military told the state media outlet SANA.
“Our air defense media responded to the aggression’s missiles and shot down most of them, and the losses were limited to material losses.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, however, claimed that ambulances had been rushed to the two positions struck in the airstrikes, adding that there were reports of injuries, with others missing.
A later report by the Observatory said that the airstrikes had targeted facilities used by the Hezbollah terrorist organization, adding that two members of the group were killed, with six more injured.
The Israeli military has not commented on the incident.
Wednesday night’s airstrike is the 17th Israeli-attributed strike on Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed groups’ positions in the Damascus area since the beginning of the year.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights 35 combatants have been killed in Israeli strikes in Syria this year, with 13 others wounded. Of the 35 killed, 7 were members of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, 8 were members of Hezbollah, 15 were members of various Iranian-backed militias, and 5 have not been identified based on nationality.