Israeli airstrikes in Syria have killed three soldiers and wounded three others in Israel’s latest attack on the war-torn country.conf State media reported that air defense forces were countering what they said were Israeli shelling targeting targets in the area of Syria’s coastal province of Tartus. “The attack resulted in the death of three soldiers, the wounding of three others,” the official Syrian news agency SANA reported, citing an unnamed military source. Since Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes inside the country, targeting government positions as well as Iranian-backed allied forces and Hezbollah fighters. Its forces were also facing “hostile targets” over the Qalamoun mountains near the border with Lebanon, SANA said. A Syrian military statement said there were two simultaneous Israeli attacks – one a missile attack targeting the countryside near the capital Damascus, carried out from the direction southeast of the Lebanese capital Beirut. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also gave the same number of dead and wounded from the second raids near an air defense base in Tartus province, where Iran-backed groups operate. The targeted site in Tartus is 8 kilometers (5 miles) from a Russian base, said the monitor, which has a wide network of sources in Syria. He said ambulances rushed to the scene of the strikes in Tartus. In early July, Syria’s defense ministry said an Israeli raid carried out from the Mediterranean Sea near the town of Al-Hamadiyah, south of the city of Tartus, had wounded two civilians. On Friday, Israeli shelling wounded two civilians in southern Syria near the occupied Golan Heights, according to state media. Last month, an Israeli strike near Damascus killed three Syrian soldiers, state media said at the time. The Syrian Observatory said the attack targeted a military installation and an “Iranian weapons depot”. After the latest incident, Israeli authorities told the AFP news agency that they “do not comment on reports in foreign media.” While Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria, the military has defended them as necessary to prevent its archenemy Iran from gaining ground on its doorstep. The conflict in Syria began with the brutal suppression of peaceful protests and escalated to draw in foreign forces and fighters. The war has killed nearly half a million people and forced half of the country’s pre-war population to flee their homes. Russia’s military intervention in 2015 helped turn the war in favor of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, whose forces once controlled only a fifth of the country.
