Syria said that it responded on Sunday, to an Israeli missile attack, while the Israeli police said that the wreckage of a Syrian anti-aircraft missile fell in a remote town without causing any injuries.
In recent months, Israel has intensified its strikes on Syrian airports and air bases to disrupt Iran’s increasing use of air supply lines to send weapons to its allies in Syria and Lebanon, including Hezbollah.
Syrian state media said that the air defenses intercepted Israeli missiles in the central regions of the country and shot down most of them.
A statement by the Syrian army said that the missiles that flew over parts of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, hit sites near the city of Homs, causing only material damage.
A spokesman for the Israeli army said that Israeli warplanes struck targets, including a Syrian air defense battery, from which an anti-aircraft missile was fired towards Israel earlier.
The Israeli police said an explosion in the air was heard across Israel, after which debris from the Syrian missile fell in the town of Rahat, 180 km (110 miles) south of the armistice line separating the two countries.
The Israeli authorities didn’t report any injuries.
Local media showed what appeared to be part of the front of a large missile in an open area in the middle of residential buildings, as well as the back of the missile in a square.
The Israeli military stated that its warplanes weren’t damaged in the operation.
For its part, the London based, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported, Sunday, that five Iranian personnel were killed and wounded, and ammunition depots were destroyed in the new Israeli raids on Homs countryside, central Syria.
Violent explosions targeted, on the night of Saturday / Sunday, sites and ammunition depots belonging to the Lebanese Hezbollah forces, in the village of al Najma in the Homs countryside, on the northeastern outskirts of Homs, caused by Israeli raids.
Israeli aircraft targeted the S200 air defense base in the village of al Qadmous in the Tartous countryside, with several missiles, coinciding with the air defenses’ response to the raids, without being able to thwart the Israeli attack.
According to the observatory, “the Israeli attack resulted in the destruction of the site in the village amidst a fire, and five members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards were killed and wounded, as they were taken to the hospital for treatment”.
Israel and since the beginning of 2023, conducted 19 attacks on Syrian territory, 15 of which were air and four land.
These attacks resulted in the injury and destruction of about 42 targets, including weapons and ammunition depots, headquarters, centers and airports, and those strikes also caused the death of 49 soldiers, in addition to the injury of 42 others.
Israeli military experts say the air strikes are part of an escalation in a conflict that has been waning for years, and aim to slow the pace of Iran’s entrenchment in Syria.
