Syrian regime says Israeli jets target military facility

Air strikes kill two people at the facility in western Mysaf town where the regime has been accused of developing chemical weapons.

Israeli jets have frequently targeted regime positions in Syria, including on the Golan Heights as pictured here on June 25, 2017.
AFP

Israeli jets have frequently targeted regime positions in Syria, including on the Golan Heights as pictured here on June 25, 2017.

Syrian regime forces said that Israeli air strikes killed two people on Thursday at a military facility in the country's west, a zone where the regime has been accused of developing chemical weapons.

"Israeli warplanes at 2:42 am today (local time) fired a number of missiles from Lebanese air space, targeting one of our military positions near Masyaf, which led to material damage and the deaths of two members of the site," the regime forces said in a statement. 

The statement warned Israel against the "dangerous repercussions of this aggressive action to the security and stability of the region."

Strikes on scientific studies facility

According to a Britain-based war monitor, Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the strikes hit a scientific studies facility, the agency the US describes as Syria's chemical weapons manufacturer.

SOHR said that a regime storage camp next to the centre was used to store ground-to-ground rockets and that personnel of Iran and its allied Lebanese Hezbollah group had been seen there more than once.

It gave the total number of dead and wounded in the strike as seven.

TRT World's Editor-at-Large Ahmed al Burai has more from Gaziantep on Turkey's border with Syria. 

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Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence, tweeted that the reported attack was not routine and targeted a Syrian military scientific centre. 

Israeli officials have in the past admitted that Israel has attacked weapons shipments bound for Hezbollah group, without specifying which ones.

An Israeli army spokesperson declined to comment on the strikes in Syria, saying the army does not comment on operational matters.

Israel breached Lebanese airspace

Jets flying over Lebanon overnight broke the sound barrier and Lebanese media reported that some Israeli jets had breached Lebanese airspace. 

In an interview in Haaretz last month upon his retirement, former Israeli air force chief Amir Eshel said that Israel had struck Syrian and Hezbollah arms convoys nearly 100 times in the past five years.

Israel sees a red line in the shipment to Hezbollah of anti-aircraft missiles, precision ground to ground missiles and non-conventional chemical weapons.

Israel is concerned that Hezbollah, with which it fought a war in 2006, is trying to obtain sophisticated weapons it could use against Israel.

Hezbollah is fighting Daesh in Iraq and Syria and rebels who want to overthrow Bashar al Assad's regime in Syria.

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