SOHR: Israeli strike on Syria wounds two civilians

 

An Israeli air strike wounded two civilians on Saturday in the Syrian government’s heartland on the war-torn country’s west coast, the defense ministry said.

“The Israeli enemy carried out an air strike” after daybreak near the town of Al-Hamidiyah, the ministry said, identifying the locations hit as poultry farms.

The strike was conducted from the Mediterranean Sea, west of Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli, and “led to the injury of two civilians, including a woman”, it said in a statement.

“Israel continues to regularly violate Syria’s sovereignty,” the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor, adding that the animal husbandry was “believed to be used militarily and commercially by Lebanese Hezbollah”.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian condemned the Israeli strike.

“With its attacks, (Israel) is trying to portray Damascus as an unsafe city to obstruct the return of displaced Syrians,” he said on Saturday during a visit to the Syrian capital.

Video footage by Syrian’s official news agency SANA showed rubble at what it said was the site of the targeted facility.

People are seen inspecting the site, where pulverized chunks of concrete and iron lay on the earth in the middle of a field.

Al-Hamidiyah is located south of Tartus, a bastion of the Syrian government and home to a naval port used by Russia, whose armed forces have backed Assad.

Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes against Syria.

Syrian air defense systems did not appear to have been deployed, the observatory said.

Last month Israeli airstrikes on Damascus International Airport rendered its runways unusable for weeks and caused extensive damage to civilian and military runways.

The Syrian war has claimed the lives of nearly half a million people and forced around half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes.

 

 

 

Source:  Jordan News