Israeli attacks on Syria kill three soldiers: state media

Three soldiers were killed and three others wounded in Israeli airstrikes on Syria on Friday, state media said after the latest such incident in the war-torn country.

“The aggression resulted in the deaths of three soldiers and the wounding of three others,” official Syrian news agency SANA said, citing a military source.

Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes in the country, targeting government positions as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters.

The latest Israeli attacks have targeted locations in the countryside around the capital Damascus and south of the coastal province of Tartus, SANA said, adding that Syria’s air defense systems intercepted some of the missiles.

The war observer from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also cited the same number of dead and wounded in the attacks near an air defense base in Tartus province where Iran-backed groups are active.

The destination in Tartus is eight kilometers (five miles) from a Russian base, said the observer, who has a wide network of sources in Syria.

Ambulances were said to have rushed to the scene of the strikes in Tartus.

In early July, the Syrian Defense Ministry said two civilians were injured in an Israeli attack from the Mediterranean Sea near the town of Al-Hamadiyah, south of the city of Tartus.

According to state media, two civilians were injured by Israeli shelling in southern Syria near the occupied Golan Heights on Friday.

Last month, three Syrian soldiers were killed in an Israeli attack near Damascus, state media said at the time. The observatory said the attack targeted a military facility and an “Iranian weapons depot.”

After the latest incident, the Israeli authorities told AFP that they “do not comment on reports in foreign media”.

While Israel rarely comments on individual attacks in Syria, the military has defended them as necessary to prevent its nemesis Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep.

The conflict in Syria began with the brutal repression of peaceful protests and escalated to attract foreign powers and global jihadists.

The war killed almost half a million people and displaced about half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes.

Russia’s military intervention in 2015 helped turn the war in favor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces once controlled just a fifth of the country.

Last month, the Observatory said seven people, including four children, were killed in a Russian airstrike in the rebel-held region of Idlib in the north of the country.