Assad regime anti-air defense fire as Israeli missiles strike Damascus, Syria, July 20, 2020
UPDATE, SEPT 4:
Satellite imagery shows damage at Iran-linked Assad regime bases from this week’s Israeli strikes inside Syria.
Analysts from ImageSat International say the photos indicate a command center and a warehouse were destroyed at Damascus International Airport on Monday, and an airstrip was damaged on Wednesday at the T-4 base in central Syria.
The Israeli military says Iran uses the airfield to bring arms into Syria and then transfer them to the Lebanese organization Hezbollah.
ImageSat also assessed, “The bombings send a strategic message to Tehran and the Quds Force [of the Revolutionary Guards], warning [against] their continued activity in Syria,” it said.
The Israel Defense Forces have not commented on the strikes.
UPDATE, SEPT 3:
Israeli warplanes reportedly struck a key airbase of the Assad regime in central Syria on Tuesday night.
The regime’s military acknowledged an “Israeli missile aggression” about 10:30 pm. As usual, it claimed that it downed most of the missiles.
But unusually, the military official said the missiles were fired from the area of al-Tanf, in eastern Syria near the Iraq border, where the US military has its primary base in the country.
The regime clung onto T4, near Homs, at the height of the Islamic State’s advance in central Syria in 2015. Israel has targeted the complex as a primary Iranian facility to move weapons to Lebanon’s Hezbollah and to carry out operations.
In February 2018, the Israeli Defense Forces bombed T4’s command-and-control center, claiming that Iranian personnel had directed an armed drone into Israeli airspace, where it was shot down by an Israeli helicopter.
ORIGINAL ENTRY, SEPT 1: Israel’s military carried out another set of missile strikes on pro-Assad targets in southern Syria on Monday night, reportedly killing several people.
Syria’s State news agency SANA said two regime soldiers were killed and seven wounded. It claimed that a female civilian was slain and her husband injured.
Unconfirmed reports said three foreign fighters perished and 10 were wounded, with the attacks targeting bases of the Lebanese organization Hezbollah.
Hezbollah acknowledged the strikes “in the northeastern countryside of Daraa [Province], where the Lebanese Hezbollah forces are present”.
The Israeli attacks were the first since August 3, when missiles were fired on Assad regime positions in southwest Syria near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The Israeli military said the operations were retaliation for an Iranian team which tried to plant explosives near the Golan fence.
On July 20, an Israeli strike near Damascus killed a Hezbollah fighter, bringing vows of retaliation from the organization’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. He promised on Sunday that an Israeli soldier would be killed.
SANA said the civilian, Matalla al-Sarhan, was killed in the village of al-Hayjaneh. It reported the missiles were from near Mount Hebron in the Golan Heights.
The regime military put out its standard statement that a number of the missiles were downed by anti-aircraft fire.
Israel has regularly struck Assad regime, Iranian, and Hezbollah positions throughout Syria’s 112-month conflict. Tel Aviv has escalated the attacks since April, seeking the withdrawal of Iranian forces and Iran-backed foreign militia from the country.
Iranian bases throughout Syria have been attacked, with casualties among Iranian and Assad regime personnel. Key facilities in the regime’s conventional and chemical weapons programs have been damaged. An attack in June came hours after a visit by the commander of the Iran Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, which is responsible for operations in Syria.
