Israel fires missiles towards building south of Damascus – report

The IDF fired two missiles from the Golan Heights towards an empty building south of Damascus on Tuesday night, according to the Syrian state news agency SANA.

One of the missiles was shot down and no losses were caused according to the report. It is unclear as of yet if the missiles were fired from an aircraft or were surface-to-surface missiles.

The latest strike comes a little over a week after two Syrian soldiers were injured and material damage was caused in an alleged Israeli airstrike targeting sites along the coast of Syria and in the center of the country.

A military source told SANA at the time that an Israeli airstrike was carried out from north of Beirut, targeting sites in the central and coastal region of Syria, adding that the majority of the incoming missiles were intercepted. Initial reports by Syrian sources indicated that the strikes targeted locations near Homs in western Syria and Tartus on the coast.

A woman was injured and a number of houses were damaged in Hermel in northeastern Lebanon due to shrapnel from the interceptions of Israeli missiles by Syrian air defenses, according to Lebanon’s National News Agency.

Some of the targets in the airstrikes last week were reportedly located near the Shayrat Airbase near Homs. The ALMA Research and Education Center reported in October that Iranian UAVs were being transferred to the Shayrat Airbase.

Less than a week before that airstrike, an alleged Israeli airstrike targeted a site in the Zakya area, southwest of Damascus, causing material damage, according to the Syrian state news agency SANA. Opposition-affiliated media reported that the airstrikes targeted sites belonging to Iranian militias.

Earlier in October, Iranian militias warned of a “harsh response” after a number of Syrian and Iranian-backed forces were killed and wounded in an alleged Israeli airstrike near Palmyra in central Syria. 

A joint operations room affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Hezbollah and the Assad regime warned at the time that it has decided to respond harshly to the airstrikes after a number of operatives were killed and wounded in them, according to Hezbollah-affiliated media.

Over the past year, while Israeli strikes have intensified in Syria, the response time by Syrian air defense batteries has become quicker, leading the IAF to change how it acts during such operations including by having larger formation during operations so that more targets can be struck at once during an operation instead of having jets return to the same target over again.

Iran has begun deploying advanced anti-aircraft missile batteries to the region in an attempt to challenge Israeli jets.