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| What is believed to be guided missiles are seen in the sky during what is reported to be an attack in Damascus, Syria, January 21, 2019, in this still image taken from a video obtained from social media. Facebook Diary of a Mortar Shell in Damascus/Youmiyat Qadifat Hawun fi Damashq/via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS – THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. MANDATORY CREDIT. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES |
Israel struck in Syria early on Monday as part of its increasingly open assault on Iran’s presence there, shaking the night sky over Damascus with an hour of loud explosions in a second consecutive night of military action.
Meanwhile the head of Iran’s air force said on Monday the country was impatient to fight Israel and destroy it, a state-linked news website said.
“The young people in the air force are fully ready and impatient to confront the Zionist regime and eliminate it from the Earth,” Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh was quoted as saying by the Young Journalist Club, a website supervised by state television.
The threat of open confrontation between arch-enemies Israel and Iran has long simmered in Syria, as the Iranian military has established a presence there since early in its civil war in support of President Bashar al-Assad against rebels
Israel, regarding Iran as its biggest threat, has repeatedly attacked Iranian targets and those of allied militia, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, in Syria, aiming to push them far from its frontier.
The Israeli military said its fighter jets had attacked the Iranian targets early on Monday, including munition stores, a position in the Damascus International Airport, an intelligence site and a military training camp.
Israeli jets then targeted Syrian defence batteries after coming under fire, the Israeli military said, and the Defence Ministry of Russia, Assad’s strongest ally, said four Syrian soldiers were killed and six wounded.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said 11 people had been killed.
Syrian air defences, supplied by Russia, had destroyed more than 30 cruise missiles and guided bombs, the Russian Defence Ministry said, according to RIA news agency.
Syrian state media, citing a military source, said the country had endured “intense attack through consecutive waves of guided missiles, but had destroyed most “hostile targets”.
Israel’s target was the Iranian Quds Force, a special unit in charge of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps overseas operations, the Israeli military said.
It followed a previous night of cross-border fire, which Israel said was prompted by a rocket fired at a packed ski resort in the Golan Heights, close to the frontier with Syria.
Israel did not say who it suspected of carrying out the rocket attack.
Syria said it was Israel that had attacked, and its own air defences that had repelled the assault.
NETANYAHU
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is hoping to win a fifth term in an April 9 election, has been playing up military sorties into Syria that Israel had previously preferred to keep quiet.
“We have a permanent policy, to strike at the Iranian entrenchment in Syria and hurt whoever tries to hurt us,” he said on Sunday.
Israel, which appointed a new military chief last week, also appeared keen to signal zero tolerance for Sunday’s rocket launch, which it said had been foiled by its Iron Dome interceptor system.
The Israeli army said the Mount Hermon ski resort in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights would be shut for the day. It added that otherwise things remained “routine” along the frontier with Syria.
Netanyahu last week acknowledged an Israeli attack on what he called an Iranian arms cache in Syria, where Tehran provides Damascus with vital support.
He told his cabinet Israel had carried out “hundreds” of attacks over the past years of Syria’s war to curtail Iran and its ally Hezbollah.
Iran has said it has no plans to quit Syria, where it has helped Assad fight off an eight-year rebellion against his rule. Most of the country is now back under Damascus’ control, and Assad’s alliances with both Iran and Russia remain very strong.
Last summer, he took back rebel-held territory in southwest Syria, near the Golan Heights, in a campaign that was supported by Iran-backed militias.
