Israel strikes near Syria's capital, sixth reported attack this month

Israel carried out an air strike near the Syrian capital early Friday, Syrian state media reported, the second attack near Damascus in two days in a sign of intensifying Israeli efforts to counter Iran's foothold in the country. Citing a military source, state media reported that Israel fired "sprays of missiles" just after midnight that hit "a site in the Damascus countryside," without specifying further.

Israel carried out an air strike near the Syrian capital early Friday, Syrian state media reported, the second attack near Damascus in two days in a sign of intensifying Israeli efforts to counter Iran's foothold in the country.

Citing a military source, state media reported that Israel fired "sprays of missiles" just after midnight that hit "a site in the Damascus countryside," without specifying further. "Syrian air defences intercepted the missiles and shot down a number of them," the source said, saying the aggression caused some material damage. There were no details about casualties.

There was no immediate statement from Israel, which usually declines to comment on reports of strikes in Syria. Israel has for years been carrying out attacks against what it has described as Iran-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran's influence has grown since it began supporting President Bashar al-Assad in the civil war that began in 2011.

Iranian-backed groups, including Lebanon's Hezbollah, and Iraqi paramilitary groups have entrenched positions around the capital and in the country's north, east and south. The new attack follows a strike overnight on Thursday that left two soldiers wounded, according to state media. A source with Syria's opposition factions said the strike on Thursday hit a car carrying pro-Iran personnel near a Syrian security building.

Iran "strongly condemned the Thursday and Friday morning attacks of the aggressor Zionist regime on some centers in Damascus and its suburbs," foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said in an online statement on Friday. Friday's overnight attack caps a month of particularly intense air strikes on Syria, with at least six strikes in March alone, according to a tally by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor with sources in the country.

On March 22, an Israeli strike near the northern city of Aleppo's airport put it briefly out of service. Regional intelligence sources said the attack hit an Iranian arms depot. Iran-backed groups then launched armed drones at a base hosting U.S. forces in the northeast, killing one American contractor and wounding another, as well as several troops. The U.S. responded with air strikes on

installations in eastern Syria that it said were affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The U.S. on Thursday said six U.S. troops suffered traumatic brain injuries

during the tit-for-tat exchanges last week. Those exchanges and the stepped-up Israeli strikes have brought Iran's role in Syria into renewed focus, and underlined how Syria remains a theatre of regional and international conflict even as ties are normalising elsewhere.

Saudi Arabia and Iran have decided to resume diplomatic relations, as have Saudi Arabia and Syria

.

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)