DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Israeli airstrikes over a town in the central Syrian province of Hama on Thursday wounded two civilians, Syrian state-run media reported.
The reports said Syria’s air defense systems shot down some of the missiles coming from over the Mediterranean Sea before they hit their targets. There were no reports of fatalities and no comment from Israel.
A Syrian opposition war monitor — the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights — said the airstrikes targeted Iran-backed militias’ positions and warehouses in the area.
Israel has made hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria over the past decade of its civil war, but rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.
It has, however, acknowledged that it targets bases of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s allies, including Lebanon’s militant Hezbollah group and other Iran-backed militias.
Israeli airstrikes near Damascus in July killed seven Syrian soldiers and wounded three others, and in June temporarily put the country’s main civilian airport out of commission after targeting its runways in a pre-dawn air raid.
In the strategic Deir el-Zour province in eastern Syria, the U.S. military and Iranian-backed militias have exchanged attacks in a significant escalation over the past two days.
