JERUSALEM (JTA) — Israel fired several surface-to-surface missiles at a Syrian military airbase outside Damascus, Syria’s state news agency SANA reported.
The missiles were fired from “occupied territories,” causing a fire but no human casualties, SANA reported, citing an unnamed military source.
The source told SANA that the attack is a “desperate” attempt on the part of what the news agency called the “Israeli enemy” to support Syrian rebel groups, which SANA called “terrorist,” and to “raise their deteriorating morale.”
The source said the attack will make the Syrian military “even more determined to cut off the hands of the terrorist agents of the Zionist entity, which should be held fully responsible for the repercussions and consequences of these criminal attacks,” according to SANA.
Some reports in Arab media say that a weapons depot near the military airport was hit.
Israel has not commented on the reports.
Last week, Israel’s Air Force reportedly attacked a Syrian army position and a Hezbollah weapons convoy along the highway connecting Damascus and Beirut, which required the military airplanes to fly in Lebanese airspace.
The Israel Defense Forces, as is its standard practice, has neither confirmed nor denied the reports, saying it does not respond to foreign media reports.
Three days earlier, the Israeli Air Force struck an Islamic State-affiliated group in Syria, killing four of its members, hours after the group fired on Israeli soldiers across the border in the Golan Heights.
The tension between Syria and Israel comes amid renewed fighting in the area between rebel and government forces in a more than five-year civil war.
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