As Israel continues to battle the Hamas Islamic fighters in Gaza, military authorities on Tuesday said the country had pre-dawn air strikes near the Syrian capital.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor said Israel targeted a military position that also housed members of Lebanon’s Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah, near the town of Kanaker.
Syria’s official news agency, SANA said the Israeli enemy carried out air strikes from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting several sites in the Damascus countryside around 4:35 am local time (0135 GMT).
An unnamed military source said the strikes caused only “material damage”, without specifying the target.
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes targeting Syria, but it has repeatedly said it will not allow arch-foe Iran, which backs President Bashar al-Assad’s government, to expand its presence there.
The reported Israeli strikes were the year’s first in Syria, where it has intensified attacks in the wake of its war with the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
During more than a decade of civil war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces as well as Syrian army positions.
Recent months have seen regular cross-border exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, in southern Lebanon.
Tehran in December accused Israel of a strike in Syria that killed Razi Moussavi, a senior commander in the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
