IDF says it hit Syrian military facilities in response to drones targeting Eilat
Military targets command center and air defense units, says it holds Damascus regime responsible for air assault; Syria's army reports one soldier killed, three injured
The Israel Defense Forces said Sunday it struck facilities belonging to the Syrian Army overnight in response to the launch of two drones from Syria at Israel’s southernmost city of Eilat the day before.
The IDF said it struck a central Syrian Army command center, additional infrastructure, and air defense systems in response to the drone attack.
It marked the second time within a few days that Israel has struck Syria amid tinderbox tensions in the north, where the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah has carried out near-daily attacks since October 8, claiming it is acting in support of the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing war there between Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas.
One Syrian soldier was killed and three others were injured in the strikes, against military sites in southern Syria and a residential building in the Damascus suburb of Kafr Sousa, the Syrian army said.
The Syrian military said in a statement that the attacks were launched from over the Israeli-held parts of the Golan Heights.
In the drone attack early Saturday, two Iranian-made Shahed unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down by Israeli fighter jets and the Iron Dome air defense system just north of Eilat.
No injuries were caused, though warning sirens sounded in the Shchoret industrial zone, just north of the city, amid fears of falling shrapnel following the interceptions of the UAVs.
No group claimed responsibility for the launch of the drones, but the IDF said it viewed the Syrian regime as responsible for any attacks from its territory.
To get from Syria to Eilat, the drones apparently flew through Jordanian airspace.
In the past, a Hezbollah-linked group carried out drone launches from Syria on Eilat.
In November, a drone hit a school in the southern port city, causing damage while dozens of students were in the facility. There were no serious injuries in the blast, but the Magen David Adom ambulance service treated five people for acute anxiety, and one man for smoke inhalation.
At the time, Israel said it responded by targeting the organization in Syria that launched the drone, without specifying who was behind the attack or what the air force hit.
Along with attacks from Syria, Iran-backed groups in Yemen and Iraq claim to have launched dozens of drones at Israel during the ongoing war sparked by Hamas’s devastating October 7 terror onslaught, while Lebanon’s Hezbollah has attacked communities and IDF positions in northern Israel on a near-daily basis. Iran itself also carried out an unprecedented attack on Israel in April with hundreds of drones and missiles.
Last week, Israel said its tanks and artillery shelled army sites in southern Syria that had violated an agreement between the countries.
According to the IDF, the structures erected in the Syrian part of the Golan Heights were a violation of the Agreement on Disengagement signed in 1974 between Israel and Syria, which concluded the Yom Kippur War.
The Gaza war erupted on October 7 when Hamas led a devastating cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Israel responded with a military offensive in Gaza to destroy Hamas and free 251 hostages abducted from Israel by terrorists and taken as hostages to the Palestinian enclave during the Hamas attack.
The following day Hezbollah began attacking along the border. The terror group’s near-daily assaults continued on Saturday with rocket and drone attacks that injured four soldiers, one of them seriously.
For years Israel has 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 Assad in the civil war that started in 2011.
Israeli strikes on Syria increased after the start of the war in Gaza last October.
As a rule, the IDF generally does not comment on specific strikes in Syria, though it has admitted to conducting hundreds of sorties against Iran-backed groups attempting to gain a foothold in the country over the last decade.