Israel attacks Syrian army position hours after explosions reported in Iran

Beirut:

Israeli strikes on Friday targeted a Syrian army position in the south of the country, Syria’s government and a monitor said, as US media reported that Israel had struck its arch-rival, Iran.

In a statement, the Syrian Defense Ministry said “the Israeli enemy carried out a missile attack… targeting our air defense sites in the southern region” and causing material damage.

The war monitor at the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Israel targeted an army radar position in the southern province of Daraa that had detected Israeli planes entering Syrian airspace.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Observatory, said the strikes occurred “at a time when the Israeli air force was flying intensely over the Daraa region” without Syrian air defenses taking any action.

The Israeli military has carried out hundreds of attacks in Syria since the start of a civil war in its northern neighbor in 2011, targeting the army and Iranian-backed fighters.

But attacks have increased since Israel’s war with the Iranian-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip began on October 7.

Rayan Maarouf, who runs the new anti-government website Suwayda24, had previously told AFP that there had been attacks on a Syrian army radar position in Sweida province, without specifying their origin.

The latest attacks came as explosions were reported on Friday morning in central Iran, with senior US officials reporting an Israeli attack.

Iranian news agency Fars reported three explosions near a military base in Isfahan province. The official IRNA news agency said there was “no major damage”.

Israel warned it would respond after Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Israel during the night of April 13 in an unprecedented attack that was retaliation for a deadly attack on its consulate in Damascus.

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