DAMASCUS: Syrian air defenses on Wednesday intercepted missiles fired by an Israeli warplane at an air base in central Syria, state news agency SANA said, in the second such Israeli strike this week.
“An aircraft belonging to the Israeli enemy fired this evening a number of missiles... toward the T4 air base and our air defenses intercepted most of them,” SANA said citing a military source.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the attack on the air base in Homs province saying Israel was “likely” responsible.
Wednesday’s attack was the second this week, after Israeli strikes on Monday killed one civilian, three government troops and seven allied foreign fighters, according to the Observatory, a war monitor.
Monday’s strikes hit Syrian army positions south of Damascus as well as positions belonging to Iran-backed paramilitaries, including fighters of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, in the southern province of Daraa, the Observatory said.
Israel has carried out hundreds of raids in Syria since the civil war broke out in 2011, targeting Iranian and Hezbollah forces as well as government troops.
The Israeli army rarely acknowledges individual strikes, but said that on Aug. 3 it had used fighter jets, attack helicopters and other warplanes to hit Syrian military targets in southern Syria.
Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah warned on Sunday that the group would kill an Israeli soldier for each of its fighters slain by the Jewish state, after one of its combatants was killed in an Israeli strike in Syria on July 20.