Fourth Israeli strike in a week hits multiple Syrian targets

The IDF denied that any “unusual incident” occurred within Israeli territory, as claimed by Syria’s Defense Ministry.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israel hit multiple military targets in Syria for the fourth time in a week overnight Monday according to both pro-regime and anti-regime sources.

The Syrian Defense Ministry and the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported that two civilians were killed when a missile hit a “glass factory” in the Al-Kisweh region. Another attack was witnessed on a radar post near the border with Jordan, said the opposition group.

Other Syrian sources said that the factory was accidentally damaged by an errant Syrian air defense missile and not by the Israeli Air Force (AIF).

According to Israel’s Channel 12, in a missile strike a few hours earlier, the IAF also allegedly hit six targets in an area around Damascus, including near the international airport. The news site said that these targets included an Iranian headquarters, a weapons depot and components of the Syrian air defense system.

The Syrian Defense Ministry claimed that “most” Israeli missiles were shot down during the attacks. Some Arab media reported that one of the anti-missile missiles penetrated Israeli territory and was intercepted in the Sea of Galilee area or southern Golan. The IDF denied that any “unusual incident” had occurred in Israeli territory.

The airstrikes came less than a day after Israel shot down an Iranian drone that had entered the country’s airspace from Syria. The IDF said it had tracked the drone from takeoff and it never endangered anyone in Israel.

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who made a pre-Passover visit to an air force base on Monday together with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a show of internal unity, ent a warning to both Damascus and Tehran while congratulating the troops on their success in fighting terrorism, which he said in large part is controlled by Iran.

“We will not allow the Iranians and Hezbollah, who are their agents, to harm us,” Gallant said. “We didn’t allow it in the past, we won’t allow it in the present, and we won’t allow it in the future. And when necessary, we’ll hit them and we’ll push them out of Syria to where they should be, which is in Iran.”

According to the SOHR, among the IDF’s previous targets over the past week, Sunday night’s attack successfully destroyed a Hezbollah weapons warehouse and an air defense battery in the Homs region, which is controlled by the Iranian terror proxy. A scientific research center was hit as well in the airstrike, which left two “Iranian-backed militiamen” dead and five Syrian soldiers injured, it said.

HezbollahIAF airstrikeIranian proxiesSyria IsraelSyrian Observatory for Human Rights