Israel has attacked several targets near the Syrian capital Damascus, according to a report by Syrian state media. Six people are said to have been killed. Shortly after midnight, Israel launched „rockets from the occupied Golan Heights,“ reported the state news agency SANA this morning, citing military sources. The Syrian air defense had been activated and intercepted most of the missiles.
The attacks in the night had hit an arsenal of the Iran-backed militias in the mountains, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Great Britain. Syrian military posts in the south and southwest of the capital were also attacked.
In mid-January, at least 57 Syrian soldiers and fighters from allied militias had been killed in the heaviest Israeli air strikes in Syria for years, according to the observatory. According to the information, these were the Israeli attacks with the highest number of dead in Syria since the beginning of the civil war in 2011.
The Observatory gets its information from a network of informants in Syria. The information provided by the activist organization can often hardly be verified by an independent party. The Israeli armed forces rarely provide information about their operations in Syria.
