Israel will attack any attempt to bring weapons to Hezbollah from Syria, Israel’s military spokesperson said on Thursday.
“We are identifying rockets and other weapons that Hezbollah is launching at Israeli territory that were manufactured in Syria,” Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari told reporters. “We will attack every attempt to bring weapons from Syria to Hezbollah. And we will attack all infrastructure we identify in Syria whose purpose is to produce weapons for Hezbollah.”
He added that the military has been carrying out air strikes from Beirut suburb and Hezbollah stronghold Dahiyeh to Damascus.
He was speaking shortly after Syria’s state news agency reported what it said was an Israeli air strike that hit a bridge in Syria near the border with northern Lebanon.
Fifteen people were killed in Israeli strikes on residential buildings in Damascus on Thursday, Syrian state media reported, and Israel said the attacks targeted military sites and the headquarters of the Islamic Jihad group.
The buildings targeted were located in the suburbs of Mazzeh and Qudsaya, both in the west of the Syrian capital, SANA news agency reported, citing a Syrian military source.
Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years but has ramped up such raids since last year’s October 7 attack by Palestinian terror group Hamas on Israel that sparked the Gaza war.
Commanders in Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards based in Syria have been known to reside in Mazzeh, according to residents who fled after recent strikes that killed some key figures from the groups.
Mazzeh’s high-rise blocks have been used by the authorities in the past to house leaders of Palestinian factions including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
Later on Thursday, explosions were heard in the Damascus countryside, the Syrian state TV said without giving details about the nature of the blasts.
Team Bharatshakti
(With inputs from Reuters)
