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Damascus, Syria – An Israeli airstrike on a military position in central Syria early Saturday wounded six soldiers and destroyed several buildings, Syria’s state news agency SANA reported.
SANA quoted an unnamed military official as saying the airstrike near the town of Masyaf, in Hama province, hit a military academy widely known as the Accounting School. It said Israeli warplanes fired missiles toward Syria from Lebanon’s airspace and that Syrian air defenses shot down some of the missiles.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Israeli airstrikes hit three targets, wounding 17 Syrian soldiers. The Israeli military does not usually comment on reports concerning its airstrikes in neighboring Syria, though it has recently acknowledged striking Iranian targets there. The last such strikes that Israel announced were in late March.
There was no immediate comment from Israel. Iran is a close ally of Syrian President Bashar Assad and has sent military advisers, as well as thousands of fighters from across the region, to help his forces in the eight-year conflict. Israel considers Iran its biggest threat and has said it will not tolerate an Iranian military presence on its borders.
Last week, US President Donald Trump said he would designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist group and impose sanctions on the organization. The day before, Guards commander Mohammad Ali Jafari threatened that, if the United States goes through with the designation, the IRGC will not be quiet in western Asia. Also two weeks ago, an ISI intelligence report was published containing up-to-date pictures of structures that were apparently attacked.
Al-Marsad Center for Human Rights in London reported at the end of March that at least seven Iranian soldiers were killed in an attack attributed to Israel, which took place in the Sheikh Najjar industrial zone in the suburbs of Aleppo. Iraqi mercenaries belonging to pro-Iranian militias were reportedly wounded in the offensive.
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