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BEIRUT, May 29 (AP) — Israel launched an airstrike on the Syrian capital late Sunday, the first of its kind in nearly a month, Syrian state media reported.
Syrian air defenses responded to airstrikes near Damascus, shooting down some of them, state news agency SANA reported. It said the attack caused only “material damage”.
The last suspected Israeli airstrike in Syria occurred on May 2, targeting the international airport in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. State media said at the time that the attack killed a Syrian soldier and rendered the airport unusable.
There was no immediate statement from Israeli authorities on Sunday’s airstrike on Damascus.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition war monitor, said Israeli missiles had targeted sites used by Hezbollah, a Lebanese militant group allied with the Syrian government, and that ambulances were transporting those wounded in the attack.
The Observatory said it was the 17th Israeli attack on Syrian territory since the beginning of the year.
Israel, which has vowed to block Iranian fortifications in its neighbour, has carried out hundreds of strikes against targets in government-held areas in neighboring Syria in recent years but has rarely acknowledged it.
However, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Galante, speaking at a security conference earlier this month, said the new Israeli government had significantly increased the number of strikes on Iranian targets since it took office late last year.
Last week, an Israeli military spokesman said in a statement that an Israeli drone on a surveillance mission in Syrian airspace was “under fire with small arms,” and Israeli forces returned fire with machine guns. (Associated Press)
(This is an unedited and auto-generated story from a Syndicated News feed, the content body may not have been modified or edited by LatestLY staff)
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