The Syrian military said the country's air defenses responded Monday night to Israeli air raids in south Damascus that killed five people and wounded seven, and which Western intelligence sources said targeted a major Iranian-backed ammunition depot on the edge of the capital.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the country's civil war, said the suspected Israeli strikes targeted government and Iranian militia posts and that the five casualties were apparently members of the Iranian Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and members of other pro-Iran militias operating in Syria.
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The Observatory also reported that Syrian air defenses "did not intercept a single target." Other media outlets said the attack came in two separate waves.
Syrian military defectors said the strike targeted a major Iranian-run ammunitions depot in Jabal al Mane near the town of Kiswa, where the IRGC has long been entrenched in a rugged area almost 15 km (9.3 miles) south of the center of Damascus. Other strikes hit Muqaylabiya and Zakiya, towns near Kiswa, where Hezbollah terrorists are deployed with other pro-Tehran militias in strength, according to two senior army defectors.
An official in the regional alliance that supports Iran said that there were no Iranian or Hezbollah casualties.
Saudi Arabia-based news site Al Arabiya, however, reported that an Iranian general and several other officers from the IRGC were killed in an attack on a special command and control center in Damascus. The report has not been confirmed elsewhere.
The blasts were heard throughout the capital and shook windows of several neighborhoods there, according to residents.
"The Israelis have targeted a major ammunition depot. There were several strikes and the blasts were huge. There are reports that Iranian personnel have been killed," said Zaid al Reys, a Syrian analyst in touch with sources on the ground.
The air raids, which came just before 10 p.m. (Israel time), continued for more than 15 minutes.
A Syrian military official quoted in Syrian state media said the attack was carried out by Israeli jets that took off from the Golan Heights. The unnamed official said air defenses responded and downed most of the missiles.
Israel rarely comments on such reports but is believed to have carried out scores of raids targeting Iran's military presence in Syria. In the past two months alone, Syria has accused Israel of carrying out at least eight air raids on its territory. The last reported strikes came in late June.
Western intelligence sources say Israel's stepped up strikes on Syria in the last few months are part of a shadow war approved by Washington and part of the anti-Iran policy that has undermined in the last two years Iran's extensive military power without triggering a major increase in hostilities.
Iran is a key ally of the Syrian government in the nearly decade-long civil war. Israel views Iran as a regional menace and has vowed to prevent any permanent Iranian military build-up in Syria, particularly near the Israeli border.
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In recent months, Israeli officials have also expressed concern that Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist organization that also operates in Syria, is trying to establish facilities to produce precision-guided missiles. Tensions have also risen along the Israel-Lebanon border.
The strikes Monday came a day after Syrians voted in government-held areas to elect a new parliament. The vote is the third to take place in Syria since the civil war began in March 2011. It has killed more than 400,000, displaced half the country's population and caused more than five million to become refugees, mostly in neighboring countries.
