Israeli missile strikes kill 3 near Syria’s capital

Missiles were fired from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and some were intercepted by Syrian air defences

Israeli surface-to-surface missiles have killed three people near the Syrian capital, Damascus, Qazet.az reported.

The missiles came from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and some were intercepted by the Syrian air defences, an unnamed military source said on Friday.

“The Israeli enemy carried out an aggression … that led to the death of three martyrs and some material losses,” Syria’s official news agency SANA quoted the source as saying.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the three people killed were military officers and four other members of an air defence crew were wounded.

The Israeli strikes targeted Iranian positions and weapon depots near Damascus, the monitor said.

A fire broke at one of the positions near the Damascus airport where ambulances were seen rushing to the site of the attack, according to the Syrian Observatory.

The Israeli military declined to comment.

The latest strike follows one on May 13 that killed five people in central Syria, and another near Damascus on April 27, which according to the Syrian Observatory killed 10 combatants, among them six Syrian soldiers, in the deadliest raid in 2022.

Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes there, targeting government troops as well as allied Iran-backed forces and fighters from Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.