Raids are the third attack by Israel in Syria in the past few days. One of the attacks killed an officer from Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The Syrian defense ministry says that Israel has bombed outposts in the province of Homs, causing at least five soldiers to be hurt.

Archive


The raids happened early on Sunday morning. They were the third in recent days, and they happened just one day after another attack killed an officer in Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps on Friday.

In a statement on state media, the Syrian defense ministry said that at 21:35 GMT, Israel "launched an aerial attack from the direction of northwest Beirut against some outposts in Homs city and its countryside."

It said that the missiles were stopped by Syrian air defenses, and some of them were shot down.

A member of the Syrian military told state media that the attacks caused some damage to property and hurt five military members.

The Israeli army didn't say anything about the report.

Two anonymous Western intelligence sources told Reuters that the rocket attacks were aimed at the T4 air base west of the ancient city of Palmyra and the al-Dabaa airport near al-Qusayr city near the Lebanese border, where members of the Iranian-backed Hezbollah live.

At both airports, Iranian soldiers and fighters from the Hezbollah group in Lebanon are stationed, and sources say there are a lot of pro-Iranian militias in that part of Homs province.

Reuters said it couldn't confirm that the claims were true.

Syria denies claims from the West and Israel that Iran has a large military presence in the country. Top military officials from Iran often visit Syria.

Israel has been attacking what it says are Iranian targets in Syria for a long time. Iran's power in Syria has grown since it started backing President Bashar al-Assad in the war that started in 2011 after he brutally put down peaceful protesters.

In the last year, Israel has done more raids on Syrian airports and air bases. It says this is to stop Iran from using air supply lines to send weapons to militias.

Last month, an Israeli air attack on the airport in Aleppo took it out of service for two days. Since the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed a lot of people in Syria and Turkey on February 6, most aid has come through the airport.

Western intelligence sources say Iran is using more and more civilian airports to ship more weapons. They do this by taking advantage of the heavy air traffic caused by cargo planes dropping off aid after the deadly earthquake.

Iran didn't say anything about what the West and Israel said.

SOURCE: NEWS AGENCIES