Iranian-backed forces killed in Israeli attack on weapons depot in Syria
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that three Iranian-backed militiamen were killed in an Israeli attack on an arms and ammunition depot near Damascus. The official Syrian news agency SANA reported that four soldiers were killed in the attack.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights announced that Israeli overnight strikes on Syrian regime positions in the Damascus suburbs killed three Iranian-backed militiamen.
The strikes near the Syrian capital targeted “an arms depot likely used by Lebanese Hezbollah militias” and other Iranian-backed militias, according to AFP. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it could not identify the three militants killed, but all were non-Syrian.
The official Syrian news agency SANA confirmed the attacks and reported the killing of four soldiers.
SANA, citing a military source, said: "At around 12:56 [last night], the Israeli army launched a missile attack from Lebanon on positions around Damascus."
“Our air defenses intercepted the aggression and destroyed most of the missiles,” SANA added. The attacks also caused “material damage,” it said. SANA did not provide further details about the targets of the strikes.
However, Al Arabiya announced that "a number of positions, including weapons and ammunition depots belonging to the Revolutionary Guards and militias affiliated with the Iranian regime in the suburbs of Damascus," were destroyed in the operation.
According to Middle East News, local sources told Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed that the attacks were the eighth Israeli attack on military positions in the west and south of Damascus since the beginning of the new year. The sources suggested that the number of injured people was high, and that this was due to the sound of emergency vehicles apparently transporting the injured.
According to the sources, who did not wish to be named, the Israeli attack on western Damascus was focused around the Qudsiya neighborhood and the Sahara warehouse on the Dimas road. The attack also targeted the scientific research center in Jamraya and a military base around the 1st Division in the Al-Kiswa area, south of Damascus.
Middle East News also writes that a journalist living in the "Qudsiya suburb" called this attack "very terrible" compared to previous attacks, in an interview with "Al-Arabi Al-Jadeed".
Since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has repeatedly attacked positions of militias supported by Iran, Lebanon's Hezbollah, and Bashar al-Assad's forces in Syria.
Israel has rarely claimed responsibility for these attacks, but its military has said it has carried out 50 strikes on targets in Syria in the past year.
Source: DW
