Three Syrian soldiers were killed and three others wounded by Israeli airstrikes in the Tartus and Damascus areas on Sunday, Syrian state media reported.
The attacks, which also resulted in material damage, occurred just before 9 p.m., and were launched from over southeastern Beirut and the Mediterranean, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency.
The report cited a Syrian military source as saying that the attacks had triggered Syrian air defenses, which had downed “some of” the Israeli missiles.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a U.K.-based information office that documents human rights abuses in Syria, the Israeli strike targeted an air-defense base and radar in Abo Asfa, five kilometers south of Tartus on the Syrian coast, as well as Syrian military sites in the area that house Iranian militias.
The strikes reported in Rif Dimashq Governorate were in fact regime anti-aircraft missiles, according to SOHR.
Since it began in 2013 in the midst of Syria’s civil war, Israel’s shadow campaign—dubbed the “war between wars” by the Israeli defense establishment—has seen thousands of strikes on targets in Syria.
The most recent occurred on July 22, when Syrian state media reported that three regime soldiers had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Sayyidah Zaynab area south of Damascus.
SOHR reported at the time that eight people had died in the attack, three of whom were foreign nationals and two of whom were “collaborators” with Lebanese Hezbollah.
According to the Alma Center, an Israeli defense research center, the strikes may have targeted a shipment of precision-guided missile components intended for Hezbollah’s precision-guided missile program, and for Hezbollah’s independent production of unmanned aerial vehicles.
The Israeli military did not comment on Sunday’s report.
