Israel will target Iranian-backed strongholds in a second attack in less than a month on the outskirts of the Syrian capital.
The Syrian army said Sunday afternoon that Israeli-fired rockets hit parts of southern Damascus in a downpour of attacks said regional intelligence sources targeting Iranian-linked assets.
A statement from the Syrian army said the attack came from the Golan Heights and brought down most of the missiles, in the second such attack in less than a month on the outskirts of the capital.
The Israeli military strongly declined to comment on the report.
Israel has hit a wider range of targets than usual since the beginning of the year, including a major attack on forts attached to Iran further east, near the Iraqi border.
Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz said on Friday that Israel was taking action “almost weekly” to prevent Iran from intervening in Syria.
Regional intelligence sources said Iran’s Quds Force and the militias it is holding back, whose presence has spread in Syria in recent years, have a strong presence in Sayeda Zainab’s southern Damascus neighborhood. where the militias have many underground bases.
Israel has been consistently attacking what it says are the Iranian-linked targets in Syria in recent years, and has put up such a loot this year in what the sources of information on West defined as shadow war to diminish Iran’s influence.
Israeli Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi said in December that Israel hit more than 500 targets in 2020.
The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has never publicly acknowledged that Iranian forces are working on his behalf in the Syrian civil war, only that Tehran has sent military advisers.
The entry of thousands of Shia militias, from Afghanistan to Lebanon, helped fight al-Assad to keep the authoritarian ruler alive from widespread armed uprising stemming from a violent crackdown on anti-democratic protests in 2011.
Western intelligence sources say that Israel ‘s attacks this year have undermined Iran’ s widespread military power without causing a sharp rise in enemies.
Iran has built underground tunnels and distributed decoys to help mitigate the impact of Israeli attacks on its complex military infrastructure in the country, Syrian military defenders have said.