Based on foreign reports and Israeli assessments, the raid was likely meant to counter the Syrian army's activity of trying to dismantle the installed Israeli listening devices. Six Syrian soldiers were killed in Israeli strikes on Wednesday in the same area after they attempted to dismantle the IDF's listening posts, according to reports.

Video: The alleged Israeli strikes in Syria on Wednesday August 28, 2025 (Credit: Social media)

In the al-Kiswah region, the Iranians have been active in recent years, establishing weapon and armament depots alongside the weapon depots of the Syrian army's 1st Division. Approximately two years ago, the Israeli Air Force struck Iranian targets in the region.

A pro-Syrian communication network that broadcasts from Turkey reported unusual IDF activity shortly before midnight, lasting for about two hours. The IDF, it said, conducted about 15 strikes in the Tel Manea and al-Kiswah area in the southern Damascus Governorate, where Syrian army headquarters were attacked, presumably to soften the area before IDF helicopters landed troops in the Sweida Governorate and in al-Kiswah.

The strikes by Israeli Air Force aircraft stopped Syrian forces from approaching the site where the listening equipment was located. The Al-Jazeera network also confirmed through its sources that IDF forces had landed in the al-Kiswah area.

According to assessments, the prolonged presence of the commandos on the ground was designed to gather documents and additional findings to better understand Iranian activities and intentions in the region.

Official Israel has not issued a formal response to the operation, but Minister of Defense Israel Katz boasted on the X network Thursday morning with a message that could be interpreted as a hint about the operation, stating, "Our forces are operating in all combat zones day and night for the security of Israel."

The operation is occurring against the backdrop of the continuing collapse of the Syrian regime and Israel's efforts to reinforce its strategic foothold in Syria, while preventing renewed Iranian entrenchment in the region.

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For most people, the Golan Heights is wonderful for hiking, camping, dipping in chilly springs, and for resting and relaxing at the many bed and breakfasts in the area. For 13-year-old Omer Skolnik, however, the Golan Heights is fertile ground for his favorite hobby – finding historical artifacts, which is exactly what he did this week in an old Syrian army bunker.

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"For as long as I remember myself, I've had this amazing hobby of collecting artifacts," he said. "In recent years, it's developed in the direction of collecting military artifacts."

At the age of 10, he received a metal detector as a gift, and ever since he has been exploring new places, mostly historic battlefields, in search of items that can possibly shed a little light on history.

Skolnik lives in Nes Ziona and will soon enter eighth grade. One of his favorite sites to explore is an old First World War-era battlefield that saw forces from New Zealand, which fought under the Egyptian army, battle soldiers of the Ottoman Empire.

"I live next to a battlefield, and sometimes I go there with my dad or friends to look for interesting artifacts. Up until today, I've found buttons from British military uniforms and mainly old ammunition. Whatever I find I preserve and post online, and along the way, I reveal the history and learn about it myself. Even when we fly abroad, I prepare a map in advance and mark all the places we can go and look for interesting items," he said.

Last week, Skolnik and his family vacationed in the northern Golan Heights, and this time, too, he prepared a list of the places he planned to explore. "During preparations for the trip, I found a spot near the IDF Armored Corps' Revaya base in the area of Trump Heights, which was described as a Syrian bunker. We hiked in the area and eventually started exploring the bunker. At first, we didn't find it, but that's common because sometimes the openings are small and hidden," Skolnik said.

"Inside [the bunker] there was a lot of stuff, actual time capsules. We found the remnants of a hat, pieces of uniform with bloodstains, razor blades, bottles and numerous documents, one of which was dated to 1973," he continued.

Skolnik kept the documents and began the task of translating them with the help of people online and Arabic-speaking relatives.

"Based on the translation, we understood [one of the documents] was apparently written by a Syrian doctor, which contained a long list of medicines he asked the Syrian army to supply to the bunker," said Skolnik. In his estimation, the bunker was likely used by the Syrian army to concentrate and treat wounded Syrian troops.

"Exploring and researching places are two things that interest and excite me," Skolnik added. "I read and am interested in history, and I have a huge library in my bedroom with more than 200 history books. It's hard turning a hobby into a profession, but I want to be a historian. I hope I succeed."

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Reports, which attributed the airstrike to Israel, said that three soldiers in the Syrian army had been killed, including one air defense officer. In addition, seven foreign members of pro-Iranian Shiite militias and one civilian woman were reported killed.

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Late Monday night, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported that a number of missiles had been fired toward the Syrian capital of Damascus late Monday night, activating the city's air defense system. According to SANA, the system intercepted several of the missiles.

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SANA quoted a military source who claimed that the missiles had been fired from the direction of the Israeli Golan Heights. Other reports said that Hezbollah operatives had been present in the area targeted in the strike, a claim that has not been independently confirmed.

"We have been dealing with Israeli air aggression in the southern region and our anti-missile system responded, intercepting some of them," the source said.

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Russian jets joined the Syrian army on April 26 in the biggest offensive against parts of rebel-held Idlib province and adjoining northern Hama provinces in the biggest escalation in the war between Syrian President Bashar Assad and his enemies since last summer.

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The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR), which monitors casualties and briefs various UN agencies, said the 544 civilians killed in the hundreds of attacks carried out by Russian jets and the Syrian army include 130 children. Another 2,117 people have been wounded.

"The Russian military and its Syrian ally are deliberately targeting civilians with a record number of medical facilities bombed," Fadel Abdul Ghany, chairman of SNHR, told Reuters.

Russia and its Syrian army ally deny their jets hit indiscriminately civilian areas with cluster munitions and incendiary weapons, which residents in opposition areas say are meant to paralyze every-day life.

Moscow says its forces and the Syrian army are fending off terror attacks by al-Qaida operatives whom they say hit populated, government-held areas, and it accuses rebels of wrecking a ceasefire deal agreed on last year between Turkey and Russia.

Last month US-based Human Rights Watch said the Russian-Syrian joint military operation had used cluster munitions and incendiary weapons in the attacks along with large air-dropped explosive weapons with wide-area effects in populated civilian areas, based on reports by first responders and witnesses.

Residents and rescuers say the two-month-old campaign has left dozens of villages and towns in ruins. According to the UN, at least 300,000 people have been forced to leave their homes for the safety of areas closer to the border with Turkey.

"Whole villages and towns have been emptied," said Idlib-based Civil Defense spokesman Ahmad al Sheikho, saying it was the most destructive campaign against Idlib province since it completely fell to the opposition in the middle of 2015.

On Friday, 15 people, including children, were killed in the village of Mhambil in western Idlib province after Syrian army helicopters dropped barrel bombs on a civilian quarter, the civil defense group and witnesses said.

The heads of 11 major global humanitarian organizations warned at the end of last month that Idlib stood at the brink of disaster, with 3 million civilian lives at risk, including 1 million children.

"Too many have died already" and "even wars have laws" they declared, in the face of multiple attacks by government forces and their allies on hospitals, schools, and markets," the UN-endorsed statement said.

Last Thursday, an airstrike on Kafr Nabl hospital made it the 30th facility to be bombed during the campaign, leaving hundreds of thousands with no medical access, according to aid groups.

"To have these medical facilities bombed and put out of service in less than two months is no accident. Let's call this by what it is, a war crime," Dr. Khaula Sawah, vice president of the US-based Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations, which provides aid in the northwest, said in a statement.

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Reports said that the strikes included about 10 separate sorties that targeted military infrastructure belonging to Hezbollah, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and Iranian-backed Shiite militias.

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The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency initially reported that four civilians were killed and over 20 injured in the strikes near Damascus, which it characterized as "Zionist aggression."

Initials reports mentioned that several massive blasts had been noted in the capital. Later, Syrian state TV issued a message that Syrian army anti-aircraft defenses had "confronted hostile missiles launched by Israeli warplanes."

The SANA report said the strikes had begun at midnight between Sunday and Monday and had damaged several civilian homes in the Sahnaya neighborhood of Damascus. SANA reported that several civilians had been slightly injured.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog reported that several Syrian army soldiers were rushed to hospitals following the strikes, which it said targeted a research and development center for weapons and a military airport.

Meanwhile, media outlets aligned with the rebel forces in Syria reported that targets of the overnight strikes included the First Division of the Syrian Army where – according to claims – personnel from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as well as members of Shiite militias supported by Iran are headquartered.

Meanwhile, an unidentified object that may have been a stray missile crashed north of the Cypriot capital Nicosia early on Monday, but no one was hurt, Turkish Cypriot officials said.

The explosion occurred around 1 a.m. in the region of Tashkent, also known as Vouno, some 20 kilometers (12 miles) northeast of Nicosia.

Mustafa Akinci, the Turkish Cypriot leader, linked the incident to military operations in the Middle East but further investigations were underway by the military to establish what it was, he said.

"It is evident it is not something stemming from our soil. … It is one of the bad sides of the war in the region falling into our country," he said.

Officials were studying debris at the crash site, said Kudret Özersay, the foreign minister of Northern Cyprus, a breakaway state recognized only by Turkey.

"Initial findings indicate the object that caused the explosion was either an aircraft carrying explosives or a direct explosive [missile]. The writings and signs on the debris will allow us to understand exactly what happened soon," Özersay said.

If verified, it would be the first time that Cyprus has been caught up in military operations in the Middle East despite its proximity to the region.

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As it always does, the IDF responded to the missile with a series of strikes inside Syria. The targets included two Syrian artillery batteries, a number of intelligence sites, and an outlook post, as well as a Syrian air defense battery. Syrian state news outlets reported that three Syrian soldiers were killed and seven wounded in the strikes. While the airstrikes were taking place, Syria activated its anti-aircraft defenses against the Israeli planes. The IDF even reported that its own air defenses were utilized against the Syrian missile.

The Israeli defense establishment has yet to announce who was responsible for the missile fired on Saturday. In January, a surface-to-surface missile was fired at the Hermon while the site was packed with visitors enjoying the snow. At the time, Israel pointed the finger at Iran. Then, in contrast to the incident on Saturday night, the missile was fired after foreign media reported that Israel had carried out airstrikes near Damascus. After the missile was launched, Israel struck targets in Syria belonging to Iran's Quds Force, because Iran was behind the attack, as well as Syrian military targets, because the missile had been fired from inside sovereign Syrian territory.

The Israeli attack this Saturday night was strictly limited to Syrian military targets. The IDF statement did not name the party responsible for firing the missile, and instead, put the blame on the Syrian regime as the entity "responsible for any action against Israel from Syrian territory."

Two months ago, the IDF launched a media blitz in which it exposed plans Hezbollah was carrying out on the Syrian side of the Israeli-Syrian border on the Golan Heights. A veteran Hezbollah operative, Ali Daqduq, was enlisted to organize the group's efforts there. The IDF explained that Syrian President Bassar Assad's return to the Golan Heights in the summer of 2018, a move Israeli accepted tacitly, had laid the groundwork for Hezbollah to return to the Golan and execute its plans, which are known as the "Golan File."

The IDF explained at the time that the operatives working for Hezbollah, most of them Syrian citizens, were mainly employed collecting intelligence about the IDF in the area. The IDF estimated that the infrastructure was slated to be used to execute terrorist attacks against Israel as well as serve Hezbollah in opening up a second front against Israel during some future conflict with the group in Lebanon.

Nor can we forget Russia's involvement in the region. When the Assad regime resumed a presence on the Golan Heights, Russia promised to keep Iranian forces and other Shiite militias at a distance of 80 km. (50 miles) from the Israeli border, a pledge that appears not to have been kept.

On Sunday morning, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is still acting defense minister, announced that he had instructed the IDF to carry out the strike on Saturday night because "We will not tolerate firing at our territory and will respond with great force to any aggression against us." The events of Saturday night are proof that Israel's internal problems and the new election that has been forced on the citizens of Israel will not overshadow the defense and security challenges facing the country.

To Netanyahu's credit, political considerations have not guided his decision making on matters of defense. We can only hope that during the new election campaign, things will stay that way, despite the challenges that the northern arena will doubtless supply, as well as the southern front with Gaza, which has shown its volatility so many times this past year.

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A statement from the IDF said that earlier Monday a Syrian anti-aircraft system fired at one of its aircraft "as it was carrying out a routine flight in Israel. The projectile landed in Syrian territory. In response, we targeted the Syrian launcher that was responsible for firing it."

The IDF "sees any threat against its aircraft with great severity and takes measures to defend them."

A Syrian military source was cited by state news agency SANA as saying "the Israeli enemy targeted one of our military positions" in Quneitra province, which is adjacent to the Israeli Golan Heights.

It said one soldier was killed, another wounded and a military vehicle damaged.

The back-to-back statements come amid heightened regional tension over Iran's role in Syria and other parts of the Middle East. They also follow a number of reported Israeli strikes on Syria in the past ten days, according to state-run media.

Israel has acknowledged carrying out hundreds of strikes in recent years to curtail the influence of its arch-foe Iran and Tehran's Lebanese ally, the Hezbollah terrorist organization, which are fighting on the side of President Bashar Assad in Syria's war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement shortly after Monday's incident that the Syrian army "tried to harm an Israeli plane, it didn't succeed."

"Our policy is clear – we are not prepared to tolerate any aggression against us, we will retaliate against it forcefully and decisively," the statement said.

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The first responders known as White Helmets said Monday that rescue workers were still searching for survivors under the rubble after the airstrikes hit a crowded residential street in the town of Ariha. They said five women and a child were killed.

The airstrikes hit the town amid intense government bombardment in Idlib province and its environs.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says there were more than 100 air raids and as many as 93 barrel bombs dropped Monday on the southern section of the rebel stronghold.

A top opposition official warned on Monday that Russian-backed Syrian government forces would be able to advance all the way to the Turkish border if they pierce rebel defenses in the northwest, a top opposition official said, urging Turkey to do more to shield the area from a major attack.

The month-long onslaught is the most serious escalation of the war between President Bashar al-Assad and his enemies since last summer. Syrian government air strikes and barrel bombing backed by Russian air power have uprooted around 250,000 people in the territory, the last significant rebel stronghold.

Fawaz Hilal, head of the "Salvation Government" that runs Idlib province, expressed confidence that opposition fighters gathered in the Idlib region from all over Syria would be able resist the onslaught.

"This ferocious attack is a bone-breaking battle. If the regime is able to break our defensive lines in northern Hama and southern Idlib it will not stop until it reaches the borders," Hilal told Reuters in an interview.

His government, backed by the powerful Tahrir al-Sham jihadist group, had called on its employees to help shoulder the "military burden" through building sandbag defences, manning front lines, financial support or any other help.

"We are all concerned with repelling this attack," he said.

The bombardment has killed 229 civilians and injured 727 since April 28, according to The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations (UOSSM), a U.S.-based medical NGO.

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State TV says troops captured Kfar Nabudah on Sunday from militants, including members of al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group.

Government forces first captured Kfar Nabudah on May 8, then lost it on Wednesday. The village is located on the southwestern edge of Idlib, the last major rebel stronghold in the country.

The opposition's Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Syrian government forces carried out scores of airstrikes, and used barrels bombs and artillery shells to retake the village.

The latest round of violence erupted late last month, wrecking a cease-fire brokered for the area by Russia and Turkey and raising fears of a wider government offensive.

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Fighting erupted in Idlib late last month, effectively shattering a cease-fire negotiated by Russia and Turkey that had been in place since September. Russia has firmly backed Syrian President Bashar Assad's government in the eight-year civil war, while Turkey has supported the opposition.

In a brief statement on Sunday, the Russian Defense Ministry's Center for Reconciliation of the Warring Sides in Syria said government forces had ceased fire as of midnight. It described the move as unilateral but did not give details.

The pro-government Syrian Central Military Media said government forces responded to shelling by militants Sunday on the edge of Idlib. It gave no further details.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitoring group, reported an airstrike on the town of Khan Sheikhoun, saying it inflicted casualties.

The opposition's Syrian Civil Defense also reported shelling near the town of Jisr al-Shughur without reporting any casualties.

Syrian government forces intensified their attacks as of April 30 on Idlib. The area is home to some 3 million people, many of whom are internally displaced. The last round of violence also displaced some 180,000 in rebel-held areas.

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