Syrian state television says Israeli warplanes carried out an air strike in western Syria overnight.<\/p>\n
A report said the Hisya area in the countryside south of the city of Homs was targeted, and that Syrian air defences fired back in response<\/p>\n
A military source told pro-government Masdar News that the jets attacked a storage warehouse in an industrial complex while in Lebanese airspace.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military declined to comment on the reports.<\/p>\n
But Israel’s former air force chief revealed in August that it had carried out almost 100 air strikes since 2012 on arms convoys destined for the Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, which is fighting alongside the Syrian army in the country’s civil war.<\/p>\n
A commander in a military alliance fighting in support of the Syrian government told Reuters news agency that the Israeli aircraft hit a copper factory in Hisya, 35km (21 miles) south of Homs.<\/p>\n
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group, reported that the strike targeted a Syrian military or Hezbollah installation that was believed to manufacture rockets.<\/p>\n
The Syrian army responded by firing a surface-to-air missile at the aircraft, but Israel’s Channel 10 television said they were not hit and returned safely to base.<\/p>\n
“I can’t, of course, relate to reports about the Israel Defense Forces’ attack in Syria, but regardless, Israel’s position is clear: smuggling arms to Hezbollah is a red line in our eyes,” Intelligence Minister Israel Katz told Army Radio on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Another red line was “Iran’s consolidation in Syria”, he said.<\/p>\n
“I think the other side also understands this clearly and actions that took place in the past for which we did take responsibility, were actions that were according to these lines.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Syrian state television says Israeli warplanes carried out an air strike in western Syria overnight. A report said the Hisya area in the countryside south of the city of Homs was targeted, and that Syrian air defences fired back in response A military source told pro-government Masdar News that the jets attacked a storage warehouse in an industrial complex while… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=966"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":967,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/966\/revisions\/967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}