Two Syrian soldiers were killed on Wednesday in Israeli airstrikes targeting a military site in the port of Tartus, where Russia maintains a naval base.
The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported that six additional people were injured in the “Israeli aggression against some of our air defense positions.”
The Syria Observatory for Human Rights, a watchdog group, said those killed were Hezbollah terrorists, according to Hebrew-language media.
The rare daytime strikes were carried out from the skies over the Mediterranean Sea off the Syrian coast, according to the report.
Late last month, strikes attributed to Jerusalem put Aleppo International Airport out of service, with Ynet citing a Saudi report saying they had destroyed an “Iranian military shipment containing sensitive equipment.”
On another recent occasion, missiles hit several sites in the Damascus area, wounding a Syrian soldier and causing material damage.
Israel has struck hundreds of targets in Syria in recent years as part of an effort to prevent Iranian military entrenchment in the country. However, it rarely acknowledges these incidents.
On Aug. 7, four Syrian soldiers were reportedly killed and four others wounded in an Israeli strike near Damascus.
A week later, unexplained “violent explosions” rocked the Syrian capital, with the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reporting that the blasts had destroyed an arms depot belonging to Iranian-backed groups.
Tehran recently threatened revenge for the strikes, with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian saying during a visit to the Syrian capital, “The criminal practices by the Zionist entity in the region will not remain without retaliation.”
The Islamic Republic provided immense support to President Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s decade-plus-long civil war, and continues to arm terrorist outfits such as Hezbollah.
