The most recent Israeli strike in Syria was reported on the morning of 1 July.
According to the Syrian state-run al-Ikhbariya news outlet, sixteen people (including an infant) were killed and twenty-one were wounded during an Israeli attack on multiple Syrian and Iranian targets on the outskirts of Damascus and Homs. In all, at least ten targets were hit, including a base of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) which housed one of the organization’s weapons research facilities.
Syrian air defenses confronted the attack, which was launched by Israeli bombers in Lebanese airspace as well as warships off the coast, the Syrian defense ministry said in a brief report on its Telegram feed.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it was not immediately clear if the casualties were inflicted by the Israeli missiles, by Syria’s anti-aircraft fire, or by some other secondary explosion.
As is almost always the case with Israeli strikes in Syria, the target was not the Assad regime per se but rather the substantial Iranian build-up in the country. Media reported that in addition to the Syrian casualties, another nine “foreigners” were killed. According to initial assessments, all were said to have been members of pro-Iranian militias. At least some of them were foreign nationals. Several hours after initial reports of the Israeli strike in Syria emerged, the prime objective of the operation came to light. The string of sites destroyed apparently formed a logistical chain that supplied advanced weapons to Hezbollah, linking Iran to Lebanon via Syria.
The recent strike, one of the largest attacks attributed to Israel in recent years, was no doubt a major hit to Iran’s infrastructure in Syria.
