Israeli forces conducted an overnight airborne raid on a site near the Syrian capital after bombing it several times, Syrian state media reported Thursday.
Israel has not confirmed the raid, but Defence Minister Israel Katz said its forces operate “in all combat zones” to ensure the country’s security.
If verified, it would be the deepest such operation Israel has carried out inside Syria since an Islamist alliance seized power in Damascus in December.
Israeli jets had struck the site near Kisweh, outside Damascus on Tuesday, killing six Syrian soldiers according to the foreign ministry, and bombed it again on Wednesday night according to state television.
Kisweh resident Mohammed Damlakhi, 54, told AFP on Thursday that he had been woken by the sound of aircraft and explosions, and saw the mountain nearby being bombed.
“Aircraft were circling around us until around 11 pm,” he said, adding that “two helicopters landed at the top of the mountain.”
Quoting a government source, state news agency SANA said Syrian soldiers had found “surveillance and eavesdropping devices” in the area before it was hit by Israeli strikes on Tuesday.
A defence ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the target was a former Syrian military base in Tal Maneh, near Kisweh.
Following the second attack on Wednesday, SANA said Israeli troops were flown into the area to carry out a raid, “the details of which are not yet known, amid continued intensive reconnaissance flights”.
– ‘Exposed’ –
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said the site contained weapons used by Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, one of ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s main allies.
On Thursday in a post on X, Israeli Defence Minister Katz said: “Our forces are operating in all combat zones day and night for the security of Israel”. He did not elaborate.
Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military declined to comment.
The Observatory, a Britain-based war monitor that relies on a network of sources on the ground, said the raid was the first of its kind since Assad’s overthrow in December.
Carmit Valensi, senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told AFP’s Jerusalem bureau that “from what we understand, Syrian forces uncovered monitoring and intelligence devices, apparently Israeli”.
“It can be assessed that the IDF (Israeli military) forces were essentially attempting to dismantle the intelligence devices that had been installed, in order to prevent them from falling into the hands of various Syrian forces — most likely out of the understanding that they had been exposed,” Valensi added.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since Assad’s ouster, and occupied much of a UN-patrolled demilitarised zone on the Syrian-held side of the armistice line between the two countries.
It has also opened talks with the interim authorities in Damascus.
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© Agence France-Presse
