Israel carried out airstrikes on a number of targets in the area surrounding Damascus early on Monday morning, according to Syrian state media reports.
The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) quoted a Syrian military source as saying that Israel launched “waves of missiles” at a number of targets in the Damascus area at 1:18 a.m. According to the source, Syrian air defenses downed “most of” the missiles.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based human rights organization, reported what while Syrian air defenses appeared to have intercepted some of the missiles, others had gotten through. The headquarters of the Syrian Army’s 4th Division in the mountains surrounding the Damascus-Beirut Road was hit, resulting in material damage and the death of four foreign nationals, according to SOHR. Weapon and missile depots belonging to Iran and its militias are known to be present in this area, said the organization.
Targets were also hit in the vicinity of the Syrian Army’s 1st Division base in Al-Kiswa, killing two foreign nationals, and in other locations west and southwest of Damascus, the war monitor reported. The strikes, which SOHR also attributed to Israel, began at approximately 1:15 a.m. and lasted about half an hour, it said.
On Feb. 4, the Syrian government appealed to the United Nations Security Council to take “firm and immediate” action regarding alleged Israeli airstrikes in Syria the day before. According to SOHR, those strikes had targeted sites housing militias associated with Lebanese Hezbollah and the Syrian Resistance for the Liberation of the Golan.
Syrian media reported on Jan. 13 that at least 23 Iranian and Syrian troops had been killed in a wave of strikes on 18 targets in the country, including weapons warehouses in the Deir ez-Zor governorate near the Iraqi-Syrian border. Those strikes came just a week after another series of alleged Israeli airstrikes on Jan. 7, against targets south of Damascus, including a facility in the village of Sahnaya in the Syrian Golan Heights belonging to pro-Iranian militias.
