Al-Jazeera / September 13, 2023
Attack comes after an Israeli air raid hit the international airport in Aleppo in northern Syria.
Israel has carried out air attacks on Syria’s west coast, near the ancestral home region of President Bashar al-Assad, killing two Syrian soldiers and wounding six others, state media has said.
There was no comment from Israel on the attacks.
On Wednesday, Syria’s state news agency quoted an unnamed military official as saying the missiles hit air defence units in the province of Tartous and that they were fired by warplanes flying over the Mediterranean Sea.
“At exactly 17:22 [14:22 GMT] this afternoon, the Israeli enemy carried out strikes … from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea targeting some of our air defence sites in Tartous,” the official news agency SANA quoted the source as saying.
“The aggression led to the death of two soldiers, and wounded six others,” it added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Wednesday’s attacks also targeted a weapons depot belonging to the Hezbollah group.
The British-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria confirmed the death of the two soldiers, adding that a fighter whose nationality was unknown was also killed.
It was the first reported attack since an Israeli air raid hit the international airport in the city of Aleppo in northern Syria on August 28, damaging a runway and putting it out of service.
The Aleppo airport has been targeted several times this year, including twice in March, which similarly disrupted operations.
Israeli attacks have repeatedly caused the grounding of flights at the airports in Aleppo and the capital, Damascus, both of which are controlled by the government.
Israel has carried out hundreds of attacks on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years, including attacks on the airports in the capital of Damascus, but it has rarely acknowledged or discussed the operations.
The attacks ostensibly target Syrian forces or Iranian-backed groups.
Israel has repeatedly said it would not allow Iran, which supports Damascus, to expand its footprint there.
Israel has mostly avoided hitting the coastal provinces where Russia’s main military assets are concentrated.
The raids were close to the Russian navy’s only Mediterranean base in the port of Tartous where Russian warships are docked, while Moscow’s major Hmeimim air base is also in nearby Latakia province.
Russia’s intervention alongside Iran helped turn the tide in favour of al-Assad against opposition forces in the country’s more than decade-old conflict.
SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES
