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Israel targets army position in Syria: ministry

By AFP

April 19, 2024 11:33 PM


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Israeli strikes on Friday targeted a Syrian army position in the country's south, Syria's government and a monitor said, as US media reported Israel had hit its arch-rival Iran.

In a statement, Syria's defence ministry said "the Israeli enemy carried out an attack using missiles... targeting our air defence sites in the southern region" and causing material damage.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Israel targeted an army radar position in the southern province of Daraa that had detected the entry of Israeli planes into Syria's airspace.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Observatory, said the strikes took place "at a time when the Israeli air force was flying intensively over the Daraa region" without Syrian air defences taking any action.

The Israeli military has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the outbreak of a civil war in its northern neighbour in 2011, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters.

But the strikes have increased since Israel's war with Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip began on October 7.

Syria's foreign ministry condemned "in the strongest terms" Friday's "Israeli aggression and the attacks before it on its territory".

Syria called on "the international community and the United Nations... to take all deterrence measures to stop" the Israeli attacks, the ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SANA.

Rayan Maarouf from the Suwayda24 media outlet, run by citizen journalists, had earlier told AFP there had been strikes on a Syrian army radar position in Sweida province, without specifying their origin.

The latest strikes came as explosions were reported early on Friday in central Iran, with senior US officials reporting an Israeli attack.

Iran's Fars news agency reported three explosions near a military base in the province of Isfahan. The official news agency IRNA said there was "no major damage".

Israeli officials made no public comment on the reported attack and Iranian officials played down its significance.

Israel warned it would hit back after Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles against it overnight on April 13, in an unprecedented attack that came in retaliation for a deadly strike -- widely blamed on Israel -- on Tehran's consulate in Damascus.


AFP


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