Syria: Israeli airstrike kills a soldier and wounded over four
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Alaina
- . October 14, 2021
- . Update: October 14, 2021 6:54 pm
Syria–An Israeli airstrike killed a Syrian soldier and wounded others in the Palmyra area of Syria. According to state TV reports, the attack targeted a communications tower. The Syrian news agency confirmed the incident, saying that the anti-aircraft has engaged “hostile targets” south of Palmyra, in the province of Homs. According to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the affected tower belongs to the Iranian militias. The attack also targeted other positions near the T4 airbase. According to the Sana agency, six soldiers were wounded.
Last week, an Israeli missile strike on the same airbase in the province of Homs killed two pro-Iranian militiamen. Since the Syrian civil war outbreak in 2011, Israel has regularly carried out airstrikes inside Syria, targeting mainly Syrian government troops and Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces allied to the Damascus regime.
In recent years, Israel has launched numerous attacks in areas of Syria controlled by the government of Bashar Al-Assad. In particular, Israeli raids would target facilities such as research centers to develop weapons and military convoys carrying missiles from Lebanon to Syria. In addition, as reported by The New Arab, Israel has acknowledged that it is trying to target the bases of Iran’s allied militias in Syria, such as the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside Assad’s forces in the Syrian civil war. Israel believes that arms shipments are made through Syria to Hezbollah, which, in Syria, controls large areas in the eastern, southern, and north-western areas of the country, as well as the border areas between Syria and Lebanon and various suburbs around Damascus.
Hezbollah was born in 1982 as a resistance movement against the then-Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon. Over time, it has also become a local political party and a Shiite paramilitary organization whose name in Arabic means “the Party of God.” Israel and the United States regard Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, and, for the former, the group represents the most significant threat from outside national borders.
In 2006, Israeli forces and Hezbollah fought a 34-day battle, killing 1,200 people in Lebanon and 158 Israelis. In the context of the Syrian conflict, Hezbollah militants support the Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad’s forces with the support of Tehran. Since 2011, Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes in Syria to end Iran’s military presence.
A civil war is underway in Syria that began on March 15, 2011, when part of the population started to demonstrate and demand the resignation of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad. With the clash’s intensification, some Sunni Islamic fundamentalist groups began fighting to control some country regions. In this context, the Syrian government’s army is assisted by Moscow and supported by Iran and the Lebanese militias of Hezbollah. The Syrian rebels and terrorist groups, on the other hand, are supported by Turkey.
