Israel attacked Syria overnight. “Two Syrian soldiers” were killed in Israeli strikes on the Damascus airport, which was decommissioned, the official Sana agency reported on Monday. The attack took place around 2 a.m.
“The Israeli enemy carried out an air assault using a barrage of missiles, targeting Damascus International Airport and its surroundings”, and causing “the death of two soldiers, the wounding of two others” and material damage, the agency said, citing a Syrian military source. The airport is “out of service”, she added.
Numerous strikes since 2011
According to Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based organization, the Israeli attack targeted “positions of Hezbollah and pro-Iranian groups in and around the airport. , including an arms depot”. “Four fighters, including two Syrian soldiers, were killed” by this bombardment, he for his part specified, without being able to give the nationality of the two others killed.
Since the beginning of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in its neighbor, targeting positions of the Syrian army, pro-Iranian forces and Lebanese Hezbollah. Israel rarely comments on its strikes against Syria but says it will not allow Iran to expand its influence in Syria. These strikes often take place near Damascus airport, which had already been taken out of service by an attack on June 10, 2022.
Israel does not want a “Hezbollah 2.0 in Syria”
On December 28, the head of the Israeli army’s operations directorate, Major General Oded Basiuk, spoke about these raids in Syria when presenting his operational outlook for 2023. “We see that our action plan in Syria is an example of how continuous and persistent military action leads to shaping and influencing the entire region,” the IDF tweeted when reporting on General Basiuk’s presentation. “We will not accept a Hezbollah 2.0 in Syria,” added the Israeli army.