An alleged Israeli strike has destroyed a weapons depot belonging to the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah and caused significant damage to Syria’s Damascus airport, news reports suggest. Early morning Friday, an alleged Israeli missile strike hit warehouses containing Iranian weapons shipment to Hezbollah in Syria, media reports claim.
The strike on Damascus airport “hit three arms depots connected to Iran-backed militia,” the Times of Israel reported citing a UK-based Syria watchdog. The airport has been “completely disabled” following the incident, the Israeli news website added.
The alleged missile strike was meant to send a message to Iran, which has been using its commercial airlines to supply weapons to Hezbollah, a pro-Iranian militia operating in Syria and Lebanon, media reports say. The strike “was intended to thwart weapons smuggling from Iran to Lebanon via Syria, by means of commercial flights,” the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
Despite Syrian allegations, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) refused to comment on the incident, the Israeli media reported.
The Israeli news website Ynet reported the damage done to the airport:
The statement by the Transportation Ministry was the first detailing the extent of damage from Friday’s airstrike. Syrian media reported earlier that Syria suspended all flights to and from the airport and the ministry confirmed all flights were suspended because “some technical equipment stopped functioning at the airport.” (…)Saturday’s statement said the runway had been damaged “in several locations” and that the strike also hit the airport’s second terminal building.“As a result of these damages, incoming and outgoing flights through the airport were suspended until further notice,” it said.
The strike hitting Iranian weapons shipment is not the only counter-terrorism operation attributed to the IDF inside Syria in recent days. Earlier this week, a supposed Israeli airstrike destroyed an Iranian weapons factory in southern Syria.
The Jerusalem Post reported:
On Monday night, an alleged Israeli airstrike targeted sites south of Damascus.The Syrian Capital Voice site reported on Tuesday morning that the strike had targeted a factory for developing Iranian weapons in the town of Aqraba.On Tuesday night, Syrian reports alleged that Israeli tanks targeted positions belonging to the Syrian military near El Malgah in the Quneitra region of southwestern Syria.After the alleged tank fire, Israeli aircraft dropped leaflets warning that Israel would not tolerate any presence of the Syrian military in the demilitarized zone, according to the opposition-affiliated Radio Houran.
Syrian allies, Iran and Russia, condemned the strike that obliterated the Hezbollah weapons depot.
Qatari state broadcaster Al Jazeera reported their sharp response:
A spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry called such attacks “an absolutely unacceptable violation of international norms”. (…)Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad and his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian spoke by phone and also condemned the missile attack, SANA reported.Syria “will defend itself by all legitimate means” against Israeli attacks, Mekdad said.
Russia has stationed its advanced S-300 anti-aircraft missiles in Syria that seeks to protect Hezbollah and Assad regime-controlled areas in the country. Last month, S-300 fired at Israeli fighter jets reportedly for the first time since Russians entered the decade-long conflict in Syria.
“Amid rising tensions between Jerusalem and Moscow over the war in Ukraine, a Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile battery fired at Israeli Air Force jets for the first time during a reported Israeli airstrike last Friday, May 13,” the newspaper Israel Hayom reported.
Iran and its proxy terrorist militia, Hezbollah, used the Syrian conflict to built up a significant military presence in country. Hezbollah, trained and armed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has staged attacks on Israeli troops patrolling on the border.
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