Massive destruction after Israel targeted a missile facility in Syria | Syrian war news

Syrian state media reported that missiles were fired from over the Mediterranean towards the town of Masyaf, but most of them were shot down.

Satellite images show massive destruction at a giant military facility in western Syria that was recently targeted by an Israeli air strike.

The bombing blew up a depot housing hundreds of medium-range missiles of Iran-backed fighters in the country last week, according to the head of a Syrian opposition war observatory.

Rami Abdel Rahman, who leads the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the Israelis had bombed several sites, but the main target was a giant weapons depot housing about 1,000 medium-range precision-guided missiles.

He said the explosions at the facility lasted more than five hours after the attack.

An underground missile development facility in the area under the supervision of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guards was unaffected, possibly because it was dug deep in the mountains. Abdul Rahman said that the attack killed a Syrian army captain and wounded 14 others.

He said the explosions were among the largest since Israel began carrying out air strikes in Syria.

There was no official comment from the Israeli army.

Re-establishing deterrence

Lieutenant General Alexus Grynkewich, the top US Air Force officer in the Middle East, said he was “certainly aware” of reports that Israel had targeted the arms depot in Syria, but stressed “there is no connection” between that attack and the US air strikes. It struck Iranian-linked targets in Syria last week.

He said the recent measures taken by the US military are “completely separate from any other players, whether they are Israelis or anyone else”.

On the retaliatory attacks that raised tensions between the United States and Iranian-backed militias in Syria last week, Grynkewicz said he hoped “things will stop escalation and we have now reached a point where deterrence is once again established.”

Syrian state media reported that Israeli missiles were fired from over the Mediterranean Sea and most of them were shot down. After Thursday’s attack near the cities of Tartus and Hama, a fire broke out in nearby forests.

The Israeli attack targeted a weapons depot and a scientific research center near the town of Masyaf in the center of the government stronghold, according to Syrian opposition activists. Masyaf is located approximately halfway between the coastal city of Tartus and the central city of Hama.

On Sunday, The Times of Israel published images taken by Planet Labs for the BBC and provided by Aurora Intel, a network that provides news and updates based on open source intelligence.

Aurora Intel tweeted an initial analysis of satellite imagery showing some of the buildings and heavily damaged areas. The areas around the Center for Scientific Studies and Research were “severely damaged by fire as a result of secondary explosions.”

The pictures showed that part of the greenery surrounding the facility had been burned.

Israel has launched hundreds of strikes on targets in government-controlled areas of Syria over the past decade of civil war, but it rarely acknowledges or discusses such operations.

But it acknowledged that it was targeting bases of allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including the Lebanese group Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias. Israeli military officials have previously said that the attacks target Iran’s presence in Syria.

At least three Syrian soldiers were killed and three others wounded in “multiple” Israeli missile attacks on Syria on August 14, according to Syrian state media.