18 killed in deadliest Israeli attack on Syria in years

Asked by AFP's Jerusalem bureau about the raids, the Israeli military said it "does not comment on foreign media reports."

The Syrian Foreign Ministry condemned these raids, considering in a statement that “the persistence of the Israeli occupation entity in its attacks on Syrian territory” is evidence of its “frantic” pursuit of “further escalation in the region and pushing it into dangerous slopes that will have dire consequences that cannot be predicted.”

Military buildings

The Observatory said that the raids resulted in “the destruction of buildings and military centers.”

The official Syrian news agency (SANA) quoted a military source as saying that the attack took place at around 8:23 p.m. Sunday (17:23 GMT) “from the direction of northwestern Lebanon,” confirming that it targeted “a number of military sites in the central region, and our air defense systems confronted the aggression’s missiles and shot down some of them.”

Israel rarely confirms carrying out strikes in Syria, but it repeatedly says it will counter what it describes as Iran's attempts to establish a military presence on its border.

Iran’s foreign ministry on Monday condemned the “criminal” Israeli raids. “We strongly condemn this criminal attack carried out by the Zionist regime on Syrian territory,” spokesman Nasser Kanaani said. “We believe that it is time for the supporters of the (Israeli) entity to stop supporting and arming it.”

Since the first years of the conflict in Syria, Iran has been one of the most prominent supporters of President Bashar al-Assad, politically, militarily and economically. Tehran has also supported groups loyal to it, most notably Hezbollah, in fighting alongside the Syrian army.

Thanks to Iranian and Russian support, the Syrian forces were able to regain a large part of the Syrian territory that they had lost at the beginning of the war to opposition factions.

Israeli strikes on Syria have increased since the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip began on October 7, following the Palestinian movement's launch of an unprecedented attack on the south of the Hebrew state.

Although Hezbollah has announced the opening of a “support front” for Gaza from southern Lebanon against Israel, Syria is trying to stay out of the regional escalation, but the Lebanese Hezbollah and other factions loyal to Iran sometimes carry out attacks against Israeli sites in the occupied Golan Heights from Syria.

Last April, an Israeli strike targeted an annex of the Iranian embassy in Damascus, killing seven members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Iran responded to the strike with an unprecedented attack on Israel.

In August, three pro-Iranian fighters were killed in Israeli airstrikes targeting Syrian army and Lebanese Hezbollah positions in central Syria.

Source: AFP