At least four Syrian armed personnel were killed and four others injured during an early morning Israeli raid near Damascus on Monday, August 7, Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported.
Quoting an unknown military source, SANA claimed that the “aerial act of aggression from the direction of occupied Syrian Golan” was carried out by the “Israeli enemy.” It claimed that the attack was carried out with missiles which targeted “some sites in Damascus.” According to the report, the Syrian air defense shot down some of the missiles but some were able to cause material damage.
Israel has carried out hundreds of such attacks inside Syria since the beginning of the war in the country in 2011. This was the third such attack by Israel inside Syria in less than a month.
Scores of civilians have been killed and considerable civilian infrastructure destroyed in these attacks. Syria is already ravaged by over a decade of war and is facing a large-scale humanitarian and economic crisis.
Israel has also carried out air strikes targeting the Damascus and Aleppo airports, even at a time when they were operating as centers of aid delivery to the victims of the February earthquake that killed over 6,000 people in Syria alone and destroyed basic civilian infrastructure.
Experts have pointed out that the Israeli attacks violate international law and the UN principles of sovereignty. Syria and Lebanon, whose airspace Israel often violates to carry out such attacks, have filed numerous complaints with the UN against repeated Israeli violations of the UN charter and other international laws. However, the UN has failed to initiate any action against Israel so far.
Israeli forces, as has been their policy, have not commented on the attacks on Monday yet. On rare occasions in the past when Israel has acknowledged such attacks, it claims to have carried them out in self defense against alleged Iranian presence in the country. Both Iran and Syria have denied these claims.
The Syrian government alleges that such attacks are carried out by Israel in support of the anti-government forces and to prolong the war in the country which has killed over 500,000 and displaced more than half of Syria’s pre-war population.
