Syria reports Israeli strikes near Damascus, no casualties

Damascus (Syria): Israel fired several surface-to-surface missiles toward Syrian military positions south of Damascus overnight, causing material damage, state media reported Thursday.

State TV quoted an unnamed Syrian military official as saying that the missiles were fired from Syria’s Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, striking the outskirts of the village of Zakiya before midnight Wednesday. It added that no one was hurt in the attack.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said the attack targeted a building where a meeting of unknown military officials was held.

The strike came a week after a Syrian soldier was killed and five others were wounded in another Israeli attack near Damascus. The Israeli military said at the time that it attacked targets in Syria shortly after an anti-aircraft missile was fired from the Arab country into northern Israel.

There was no comment on the Wednesday night attack from Israel, which rarely acknowledges it is carrying out attacks inside Syria.

Israel has made hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria over the past decade of its civil war, but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.

Israel has acknowledged, however, that it targets bases of Iran-allied militias, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah that fights on the side of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.

Published on: Thursday, February 17, 2022, 01:49 PM IST