SOHR: Syrian soldier killed in Israeli missile attack

The air force shot down most of the missiles, and the attack caused some material losses, according to state media.

A Syrian soldier has been killed in an Israeli missile attack in southern Syria, according to the Syrian State News Agency (SANA).

“Around 12.50 (23.50 GMT on Wednesday), the Israeli enemy carried out an air strike with several missiles in the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan and targeted several positions in the south,” a military source was quoted as saying by SANA on Thursday.

The Syrian air force managed to “shoot down most of the missiles,” said the source, who specified that “the aggression caused the death of a soldier and material damage”.

The Israeli military has not commented on the report.

Since the outbreak of war in Syria in 2011, Israel has staged hundreds of attacks on targets in areas controlled by  Bashar al-Assad’s government, but rarely recognizes or discusses such operations.

Earlier this month, the Syrian military said Israeli fighter jets fired missiles at the port of Latakia and damaged containers, but without inflicting casualties. The port is an important facility where much of Syria’s imports are brought into the war-torn country.

In late November, Israeli missile attacks in the western part of Homs province also killed five people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In two separate Israeli attacks in October, five pro-Iranian militiamen were killed near the Syrian capital, Damascus, while nine pro-government fighters were killed near the T4 air base east of Palmyra in central Syria, the British monitoring group said. .

Israel has acknowledged that it is targeting the bases of Iranian allied militias, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, which has fighters stationed in Syria to support al-Assad’s forces.

It says it is attacking arms shipments believed to be on its way to the militias, calling the Iranian presence on its northern border a red line.

The conflict in Syria has killed hundreds of thousands of people since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations.