Israeli jets hit Iranian targets

Israel struck in Syria early yesterday as part of its increasingly open assault on Iran's presence there, shaking the night sky over Damascus with an hour of loud explosions in a second consecutive night of military action.

Damascus did not say what damage or casualties resulted from the strikes, but a war monitor said 11 were killed and Syria's ally Russia said four Syrian soldiers died.

The threat of direct confrontation between arch-enemies Israel and Iran has long simmered in Syria, where the Iranian military built a presence early in the civil war to help President Bashar al-Assad fight Sunni Muslim rebels seeking to oust him.

Israel, regarding Iran as its biggest threat, has repeatedly attacked Iranian targets in Syria and those of allied militia, including Lebanon's Hezbollah without claiming responsibility for the attacks.

But with an election approaching, and with the US vowing more action on Iran, Israel's government has lifted the lid on strikes that it once preferred to keep quiet, and has also taken a tougher stance towards Hezbollah on the border with Lebanon.

It said a rocket attack on Sunday was Iran's work.

In Tehran, air force chief Brigadier General Aziz Nasirzadeh said Iran was "fully ready and impatient to confront the Zionist regime and eliminate it from the earth", according to the Young Journalist Club, a website supervised by state television.

Assad has said Iranian forces are welcome to stay in Syria after years of military victories that have brought most of the country back under his control, though two large enclaves are still held by other forces.

His other main ally Russia, worried about the consequences of Israeli strikes for the wider pursuit of a war that is now entering its ninth year, has provided Syria with air defence systems.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is hoping to win a fifth term in the April 9 election, said, "Yesterday evening, the air force struck a strong blow against Iranian targets in Syria after Iran fired a missile from there toward Israel."

"We do not allow such acts of aggression to pass by. We are acting against Iran and against the Syrian forces who are tools of Iranian aggression," Netanyahu said at an inauguration ceremony for a new airport in southern Israel yesterday.

In a highly publicised operation last month, the Israeli military uncovered and destroyed cross-border tunnels from Lebanon that it said were dug by Hezbollah to launch attacks during any future war between them.

NIGHT ATTACK

The Israeli military said its fighter jets had attacked Iranian targets early yesterday, including munitions stores, a position in the Damascus International Airport, an intelligence site and a military training camp.

Its jets then targeted Syrian defence batteries after coming under fire, the Israeli military said, and the Defence Ministry of Russia, Assad's strongest ally, said four Syrian soldiers were killed and six wounded.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said 11 people had been killed.

Syrian air defences, supplied by Russia, had destroyed more than 30 cruise missiles and guided bombs, the Russian Defence Ministry said, according to RIA news agency.

Syrian state media, citing a military source, said the country had endured "intense attack through consecutive waves of guided missiles, but had destroyed most "hostile targets".

Israel's target was the Iranian Quds Force, a special unit in charge of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps overseas operations, the Israeli military said.

It followed a previous night of cross-border fire, which Israel said began when Iranian troops fired an Iranian-made surface-to-surface missile from an area near Damascus at a packed ski resort in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Iran has yet to respond to the accusation, reported Reuters.

IS SUICIDE ATTACK

A suicide car bomb attack on a military convoy in northeastern Syria yesterday killed five members of a Kurdish-led force accompanying US troops in an anti-jihadist coalition, reported AFP.

The attack, claimed by the Islamic State group, came less than a week after another deadly attack on US forces in Syria and a month after Washington announced a US troop pullout from the war-torn country.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said five fighters from the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were killed in the blast on a road in Hasakeh province.

"A suicide attacker driving a bomb-laden car targeted a convoy of American forces accompanied by the SDF on the Hasakeh-Shadadi road," the Observatory said.