Israeli air strikes in Syria kill three soldiers: State media

Syrian state media say latest Israeli attacks targeted sites near Damascus and the coastal Tartous province.

At least three Syrian soldiers have been killed and three others wounded in “multiple” Israeli missile attacks on Syria, according to state media.

The SANA news agency said on Sunday that the missile attacks took place at 8:50pm (17:50 GMT) and targeted “some points” in the countryside near the capital, Damascus, and in the coastal province of Tartous.

Syrian air defence forces confronted the “aggressions” and downed some of the missiles, SANA said, citing an unnamed military source.

“The aggression led to the death of three soldiers, the wounding of three others,” it reported.

The attacks on Damascus were carried out from a direction southeast of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, while the attacks on Tartous came from the Mediterranean sea.

In addition to the deaths, the attacks caused some “material damage,” the military source told SANA.

The Israeli military declined to comment.

Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air raids inside the country, targeting government positions as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters. Israel rarely comments on individual raids in Syria, but the Israeli military has defended them as necessary to prevent Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, also reported on Sunday’s attacks, saying the raids targeted an air defence base in Tartous province, where Iranian-backed groups are active.

The site in Tartous is located 8km (5 miles) from a Russian base, said the monitor, which has a wide network of sources in Syria.

It said ambulances had rushed to the scene of the raids in Tartous.

It added that two missiles also struck a Syrian government military site in the Al-Qutayfah area in the Damascus countryside.

Other recent reported Israeli attacks in Syria include a raid near Damascus that killed three Syrian soldiers last month. The Syrian Observatory said that attack targeted a military facility and an “Iranian weapons depot”.

Civilians have also been wounded in the Israeli raids.

Syria’s defence ministry said in early July that an Israeli raid carried out from the Mediterranean Sea near the town of Al-Hamadiyah, south of Tartous town, had wounded two civilians.

State media also reported that Israeli shelling on Friday had wounded two civilians in southern Syria near the occupied Golan Heights.

The conflict in Syria started with the brutal repression of peaceful protests and escalated to pull in foreign powers and fighters.

The war has killed nearly half a million people since 2011 and forced half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes.

Russia’s military intervention in 2015 helped turn the war in favour of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces at one point controlled just one-fifth of the country.