SANA said that overnight, Tel Aviv fired "sprays of missiles" that hit an area near the countryside of Damascus.

Syria's state media say that Israel has launched an air attack near Damascus. This is the second attack near the capital in the last two days.

Witnesses told the Reuters news agency that they heard at least three big explosions over the city overnight.

State media said that Israel fired "sprays of missiles" just after midnight. They got this information from a military source.

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"The missiles were stopped by Syrian air defenses, and some of them were shot down," a source said, adding that the attack did cause some damage to property.

There was no information about who died.

The source said that the attack hit "a site in the countryside of Damascus," but they didn't say anything else.

Israel didn't say anything right away, as they usually don't when there are reports of attacks in Syria.

Israel has been attacking what it says are Iranian targets in Syria for years. Iran's power has grown in Syria since it started backing President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war that started in 2011.

Israel says that the goal of these operations is to stop Iranian weapons from getting to armed groups in Syria that Tehran backs.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in the UK and has sources on the ground, says that there have been at least six attacks in March alone.

Israeli missiles hit an area near Damascus on Thursday, and two soldiers were hurt, Syrian state media said.

In Syria's civil war, nearly half a million people have died, and about half of the country's population before the war has been forced to leave their homes.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES