Syrian soldier killed in Israeli missile attack: State media
Air defences downed most of the missiles, and the attack caused some material losses, according to state media.
A Syrian soldier has been killed in an Israeli missile attack in southern Syria, according to Syria’s state news agency (SANA).
“At around 12:50am (23:50 GMT Wednesday), the Israeli enemy carried out an air raid with several missiles in the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan and targeting several positions in the south,” a military source was quoted by SANA as saying on Thursday.
The Syrian air defences managed to “shoot down most of the missiles”, said the source, who specified that “the aggression caused the death of a soldier and material damage”.
The Israeli military has not commented on the report.
Since war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has staged hundreds of strikes on targets inside areas controlled by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.
Earlier this month, Syria’s military said Israeli fighter jets fired missiles on the port of Latakia, damaging containers but without inflicting casualties. The port is a vital facility where much of Syria’s imports are brought into the war-torn country.
In late November, Israeli missile attacks in the west of Homs province also killed five people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
In two separate Israeli attacks in October, five pro-Iranian militiamen were killed near the Syrian capital, Damascus, while nine pro-government fighters were killed close to the T4 airbase east of Palmyra in central Syria, the United Kingdom-based monitoring group said.
Israel has acknowledged that it targets the bases of Iran-allied militias, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, which has fighters deployed in Syria to back al-Assad’s forces.
It says it attacks arms shipments believed to be bound for the militias, calling Iranian presence on its northern frontier is a red line.
The conflict in Syria has killed hundreds of thousands of people since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations.