DAMASCUS (National Times) – Syrian air defence intercepted Israeli missiles south of Damascus on Monday, with no casualties reported, a military source told Syria s official news agency SANA.<\/p>\n
“The Israeli enemy carried out an airstrike from the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting points south of Damascus,” with Syria s air defence intercepting most of the missiles, SANA quoted the military source as saying.<\/p>\n
“The losses were limited to material damage.”<\/p>\n
An AFP correspondent in the capital Damascus heard loud noises in the evening.<\/p>\n
The airstrike targeted sites in the southern Damascus countryside where the Lebanese Hezbollah group and Syrian air defence units are active, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.<\/p>\n
Last month, Israeli surface-to-surface missiles killed at least three Syrian officers near Damascus, according to the Observatory — which has a wide network of sources inside Syria.<\/p>\n
The Israeli strikes had targeted Iranian positions and weapon depots near Damascus, the monitor said at the time.<\/p>\n
Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes against its neighbour, targeting government troops as well as allied Iran-backed forces and fighters of Lebanon s Shiite militant group Hezbollah.<\/p>\n
While Israel rarely comments on individual strikes, it has acknowledged carrying out hundreds of them.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military has defended them as necessary to prevent its arch-foe Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep.<\/p>\n
The conflict in Syria has killed nearly half a million people and forced around half of the country s pre-war population from their homes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
DAMASCUS (National Times) – Syrian air defence intercepted Israeli missiles south of Damascus on Monday, with no casualties reported, a military source told Syria s official news agency SANA. “The Israeli enemy carried out an airstrike from the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting points south of Damascus,” with Syria s air defence intercepting most of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","entry"],"yoast_head":"\n