JERUSALEM: The Israeli air force struck in Syria to prevent an Iranian force from launching an attack on the Jewish state with drones armed with explosives, the army said Sunday.
“The IDF, by Israeli aircraft, was able to thwart an Iranian attempt led by the Quds force from Syria to conduct an attack on Israeli targets in northern Israel using killer drones,” military spokesman Jonathan Conricus told reporters, referring to the Israeli armed forces.
According to Conricus, the Israeli attack took place in Aqraba, southeast of Damascus, and targeted “a number of terror targets and military facilities belonging to the Quds force as well as Shiite militias.”
The army had on Thursday prevented an earlier attempt to launch the drone attack, Conricus said, without providing further details.
“The threat was significant and these killer drones were capable of striking targets with significant capacity,” he said.
Since the beginning of the war in Syria in 2011, Israel has conducted hundreds of strikes in Syria, most of them against what it says are Iranian and Hezbollah targets.
Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shiite group that supports Syria‘s President Bashar al-Assad, who is also backed by Tehran.
Israel says it is determined to prevent its arch-foe Iran from entrenching itself militarily in Syria, where Tehran backs Assad’s regime.