BICOM

Hezbollah bases in Syria were hit by a series of airstrikes overnight according to Syrian state media.

Syrian military sources said the strikes were carried out by the Israeli air force. Among the targets hit were two Syrian army brigades where Hezbollah is embedded, alongside a missile depot close to the border with Lebanon, a Syrian army defector told Reuters. Syrian opposition sources on the ground said the area has a number of Hezbollah military bases, including its main communications and logistics hub for southern Syria.

Russia’s RIA news agency said Syria’s air defence forces shot down an Israeli plane and four missiles. Saudi-owned TV station Al-Arabiya reported that Israeli planes attacked Iranian militia positions in the country’s south. Earlier, Syrian state media said Syrian air defences shot down “hostile targets” flying over the town of Kiswah, south of Damascus, and “were able to foil its goals” despite the “intensity of the aggression”.

Israel Defence Forces’s (IDF) spokesman said a missile was fired at the Golan Heights, but that it remains unclear whether the projectile fell in Israel. In a statement on Twitter, the IDF said: “During a Syrian surface-to-air missile launching, one launch was identified towards an open area in the Golan Heights. At this point, it remains unclear if the launch indeed landed in Israeli territory. IDF troops are searching the area. Reports regarding an IDF aircraft or an airborne IDF target having been hit are false.”

Israel is concerned that Iran and Hezbollah’s growing presence in Syria poses a threat to its own security and has bombed dozens of Iranian positions in Syria. In September, Israel admitted to carrying out approximately 200 raids on Iranian targets in Syria in the previous 18 months.