The official news agency “SANA” quoted a military source as saying that a soldier was killed and five others were wounded as a result of the Israeli shelling that targeted areas in the vicinity of Damascus.
The source reported that “surface-to-surface missile aggression from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan” targeted, at 1:10 local time, “some points in the vicinity of the city of Damascus,” which led to “the death of a soldier and the wounding of five soldiers, in addition to material losses.” .
“Our air defenses launched the aggression’s missiles and shot down some of them,” he said, according to Agence France-Presse.
For its part, the official Syrian TV reported “material damage to a residential building, in addition to the damage to a number of cars in the Qudsaya area,” which was hit by the bombing.
For its part, the Israeli army said that it attacked missile batteries in Syria today, Wednesday, after an anti-aircraft missile was launched towards Israel, according to Reuters.
A military spokesman refused to comment on the Syrian report of an initial Israeli attack near Damascus, which reportedly killed a soldier and wounded 5 others.
But the military said it carried out a counter-strike in Syria in response to the anti-aircraft missile launch, adding that the missile triggered sirens in parts of Israel and the occupied West Bank before it exploded in mid-air.
“Following the launch of an anti-aircraft missile earlier tonight, the Israel Defense Forces attacked radar and surface-to-air missile batteries fired at Israeli Air Force planes,” the military said on Twitter.
It is noteworthy that since the start of the Syrian conflict, Israel has periodically targeted Syrian army, Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah targets inside Syrian territory.
On January 31, an Israeli bombardment targeted “military sites and warehouses of weapons and ammunition” belonging to Hezbollah, northeast of Damascus, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, according to AFP.
On January 6, Israel announced the launch of artillery shells on the Syrian side of the border after monitoring “a number of suspects inside military points”.
Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes over the past years in Syria, but it rarely confirms its responsibility, but it will continue to confront what it describes as Iran’s attempts to establish its military presence in Syria.
