Damascus
\nAn Israeli airstrike hit Syria\u2019s Latakia port on Tuesday, the second such attack on the key facility this month, according to Syrian state media.
\nSince the outbreak of Syria\u2019s civil war in 2011, Israel has routinely carried out airstrikes on its strife-torn neighbour, mostly targeting Syrian government troops as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters.
\n\u201cAt around 03:21 AM, the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression with several missiles from the direction of the Mediterranean… targeting the container yard in Latakia port,\u201d Syrian state news agency SANA cited a military source as saying.
\nThe strike caused \u201csignificant material damage\u201d and led to fires, it added.
\nAsked about the strike, an Israeli army spokesman said: \u201cWe don\u2019t comment on reports in foreign media\u201d.
\nOn December 7, Israel carried out strikes on an Iranian arms shipment at Latakia, located in President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s western Syrian heartland, without causing any casualties.
\nThat earlier attack, which was the first on the facility since the start of the war, triggered a series of explosions, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitor with a wide network of sources in Syria.
\nIn November, three soldiers and two Syrian fighters affiliated with Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah were killed in Israeli strikes, according to the monitoring group.
\nWhile the Jewish state rarely comments on individual strikes it carries out on its northern neighbour — with which it is officially at war — it has confirmed hundreds since 2011.
\nAccording to a report by the Israeli army, it hit around 50 targets in Syria in 2020.
\nIn the deadliest operation since the strikes began, Israel killed 57 regime force members and allied fighters in eastern Syria overnight on January 13, 2021.
\nThe Israeli military has repeatedly defended the operations as a bid to prevent its archfoe Iran from gaining a foothold on its doorstep.
\nIsrael\u2019s head of military intelligence, Major General Aharon Haliva, has accused Iran of \u201ccontinuing to promote subversion and terror\u201d in the Middle East.
\nIn a shadow war, Israel has targeted Iran\u2019s military sites in Syria and also carried out a sabotage campaign in Iran against its nuclear programme.
\nTehran has been a key supporter of the Syrian government in the decade-old conflict.
\nIt finances, arms and commands a number of Syrian and foreign militia groups fighting alongside the regular armed forces, chief among them Lebanon\u2019s powerful Hezbollah group.
\nThe conflict in Syria has killed nearly 500,000 people since it started in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful demonstrations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Damascus An Israeli airstrike hit Syria\u2019s Latakia port on Tuesday, the second such attack on the key facility this month, according to Syrian state media. Since the outbreak of Syria\u2019s civil war in 2011, Israel has routinely carried out airstrikes on its strife-torn neighbour, mostly targeting Syrian government troops as well as allied Iran-backed forces […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-235566","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n