Two pro-Iranian fighters killed in an Israeli raid
Israel carried out a third raid in Syria on Sunday in less than a week. Two pro-Iranian fighters were killed and five Syrian soldiers injured.
Image d’illustration.
AFP
Two pro-Iranian fighters were killed and five Syrian soldiers injured in an airstrike overnight Saturday-Sunday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, with Damascus accusing Israel of carrying out the attack. operation. This raid, which occurred in Homs (center), is the third targeting Syria in less than four days. Israel announced that it shot down a drone flying over its territory on Sunday.
On Sunday, “the strikes killed two pro-Iranian fighters whose nationalities remain unknown for the moment and injured five members of the Syrian Air Defense”, told AFP Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory of human rights (OSDH).
The two fighters were killed when an “arms depot belonging to Lebanese Hezbollah forces at the military airport of Dabaa, in the area southwest of Homs, was destroyed” by these strikes, said Rami Abdel Rahmane, whose NGO has an extensive network of sources in Syria.
According to the OSDH, the missiles targeted several military positions of Syrian forces affiliated with Iran. A fire also broke out in a research center.
two nights in a row
The strikes were attributed by Damascus to the Jewish state. “Today (Sunday) at around 00:35 a.m. (11:35 p.m. in Switzerland on Saturday), the Israeli enemy carried out an airborne assault from northeast Beirut targeting positions in the city of Homs and its province,” said the official Syrian agency SANA, quoting a military source, adding that several missiles had been intercepted by the anti-aircraft defense.
Damascus was targeted for two consecutive nights, Thursday and Friday, by air raids blamed by the Syrian regime on the Jewish state. On Thursday, the airstrike injured two Syrian soldiers, according to the Syrian Defense Ministry. And on Friday, a new raid killed two Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, one of whom succumbed to his injuries on Sunday, according to Sepahnews, the Guardians’ website.
“The blood of these high-ranking martyrs will not be in vain,” Iranian diplomatic spokesman Nasser Kanani said on Sunday, referring to Friday’s raid. Tehran “reserves the right to retaliate (…) at the appropriate time and place,” he warned.
“Heavy toll”
Israel announced on Sunday that it had shot down a drone. “Helicopters and fighter jets have been deployed to pursue an unidentified aircraft that appears to have entered Israeli territory from Syria,” the Israeli military said in a statement. “The aircraft was shot down in an open area,” she said, while an army spokesperson confirmed to AFP that the machine was unmanned.
Finally, on Sunday evening, a car bomb exploded in Damascus, the Syrian state agency SANA announced, citing a police source. “A bomb exploded in a civilian car, setting it on fire without causing any casualties,” according to the same source. The Interior Ministry said “two people were slightly injured” in the attack, which hit a pick-up truck. It is impossible at this time to know who is responsible for the attack and who was targeted.
Syria is ravaged by a civil war, triggered by the repression in 2011 of pro-democracy demonstrations and which has become more complex over the years with the intervention of several countries and foreign armed groups. In recent years, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in the country once morest positions of the regime, but also once morest those of Iranian forces and Hezbollah, allies of Damascus and sworn enemies of Israel.
Israel struck twice in March the airport of Aleppo, a city in northern Syria where groups under the control of Iran and its allies have great influence. On March 7, the first raid killed three people and on March 22, the second caused material damage, according to the OSDH. In Damascus, 15 people were killed on February 19 during an Israeli strike on a neighborhood housing the headquarters of several security services, according to the same source.
At his weekly cabinet meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he “demands a heavy toll from regimes that support terrorism beyond Israel’s borders”, without confirming responsibility for Israel in the raids. Although plagued by major protests once morest a controversial judicial reform bill, the Jewish state remains “determined” to fight its “enemies on all fronts, everywhere and whenever necessary”, a- he hammered.
AFP
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