An attack in Damascus Monday night, allegedly attributed to the Israeli Air Force, was the first air raid in Syria following the defense pact signed between Bashar Assad's regime and Iran.
A Syrian war monitoring group said Tuesday that an Israeli airstrike the previous day on military posts south of the capital, Damascus, killed five members of Iranian-backed militias and wounded several others.
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Lebanon-based terrorist group Hezbollah, Iran's largest proxy in the region, said in a statement that one of its operatives, Ali Kamel Mohsen, was killed in a strike near Damascus International Airport.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the Syrian civil war through a network of activists on the ground, said that the wounded included four "foreign fighters" and seven members of a Syrian air-defense unit.
It said the airstrike struck weapon depots and military posts on the southern edge of Damascus.
Over the past few weeks, reports broke about Iran's intention to beef up Syria's defense system with self-produced military supplies, particularly for the defense of Syrian, as well as Lebanese, airspace.
According to Channel 12 News, the Iranians are interested in sending some of their own surface-to-air defense systems after the reported failure of the Russian S-300 and Pantsir surface-to-air missile systems that were deployed in Syria.
The weapons mentioned in the report include the Iranian Bavar-373, which Tehran describes as its version of the S-300, and the Khordad-15 surface-to-air missile system unveiled for the first time last year.
Bavar, unveiled in 2016 after a decade-long development, is said to be able to detect targets or planes at more than 185 miles and destroy them at 125 miles.
The newer Khordad-15 can detect fighter jets, drones, and missiles at a 93-mile distance.
Meanwhile, Russian Avia.Pro news website reported Tuesday that during Monday's attack in Syria, fighter jets were launched from the Russian airbase in Latakia toward Damascus.
"The aircraft could have arrived within minutes to the area but experts estimate that Russia preferred permitting the Israeli military to continue the attack, which was conducted from an area under Israel's control," the report, cited by Channel 12 News, said.
Israel rarely comments on such reports but is believed to have carried out hundreds 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.
Iran has been a key ally of the Syrian government in the nearly decade-long civil war. Tehran sent thousands of Iran-backed fighters in the past years to fight alongside Syrian government forces.
Israel views Iran as a regional menace and has vowed to prevent any permanent Iranian military buildup in Syria, particularly near its frontier.
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