Israel carries out new air strikes against Syria

The Israeli air force hit east of Damascus, Syrian news agency confirmed. Dead and injured are reported.

Syrian air defenses intercepted a new Israeli “aggression” above the capital Damascus, state news agency Sana said, in the latest wave of attacks that Western intelligence sources have said were Israeli strikes on a major Iranian-backed ammunition depot on the edge of the capital. 

According to the Syrian Human Rights Observatory there are at least 7 soldiers injured.

State television said Israeli missiles had flown over the Syrian Golan Heights where they conducted raids around the capital and live footage showed blasts across the skies of the capital.

There was no immediate Israeli comment.

A Syrian military spokesman said its air defenses thwarted most of the missiles that targeted southern Damascus suburbs, areas that Israel had hit in the past, before reaching their targets and inflicted “material losses”.

Syrian military defectors said the strike targeted a major Iranian-run ammunitions depot in Jabal al Mane near the town of Kiswa, where Iranian Revolutionary Guards have long been entrenched in a rugged area almost 15 km (9.3 miles) south of the center of Damascus.

Other strikes hit Muqaylabiya and Zakiya towns near Kiswa where Lebanese pro-Iranian Hezbollah militia are deployed with other pro-Tehran militias in strength, according to two senior army defectors.