Beirut:

Israeli strikes on Friday targeted a Syrian army position in the country’s south, Syria’s government and a monitor said, as US media reported Israel had hit its arch-rival Iran.

In a statement, Syria’s defence ministry said “the Israeli enemy carried out an attack using missiles… targeting our air defence sites in the southern region” and causing material damage.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said Israel targeted an army radar position in the southern province of Daraa that had detected the entry of Israeli planes into Syria’s airspace.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Observatory, said the strikes took place “at a time when the Israeli air force was flying intensively over the Daraa region” without Syrian air defences taking any action.

The Israeli military has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the outbreak of a civil war in its northern neighbour in 2011, targeting the army and Iran-backed fighters.

But the strikes have increased since Israel’s war with Iran-backed Palestinian militant group Hamas in the Gaza Strip began on October 7.

Rayan Maarouf, who runs the Suwayda24 anti-government new website, had earlier told AFP there had been strikes on a Syrian army radar position in Sweida province, without specifying their origin.

The latest strikes came as explosions were reported early on Friday in central Iran, with senior US officials reporting an Israeli attack.

Iran’s Fars news agency reported three explosions near a military base in the province of Isfahan. The official news agency IRNA said there was “no major damage”.

Israel warned it would hit back after Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles against Israel overnight on April 13 in an unprecedented attack, which was retaliation for a deadly strike on its Damascus consulate.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Trucks carry the coffins of Revolutionary Guard members killed in an airstrike widely attributed to Israel that destroyed Iran’s Consulate in Syria in a funeral procession in Tehran, Iran on April 5, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

An adviser to Iran’s supreme leader warned on April 7 that Israeli embassies are “no longer safe” after a strike in Syria which Tehran blamed on Israel killed seven Revolutionary Guards members.

“The embassies of the Zionist regime are no longer safe,” Yahya Rahim Safavi, senior adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.

Tehran has vowed to avenge Monday’s air strike on Damascus that levelled the Iranian embassy’s consular annex, killing seven Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members including two generals.

“The resistance front is ready; how it (the response) will be, we have to wait,” Mr. Safavi said, noting that “confronting this brutal regime is a legal and legitimate right”.

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He also noted that multiple Israeli embassies around the region “have been shuttered”.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

Monday’s attack, which Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said killed 16 people, was the fifth raid on Syria in a week blamed on Israel.

Among the dead were generals Mohammad Reza Zahedi and Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi who were senior commanders in the Quds Force, the IRGC’s foreign operations arm.

Zahedi, 63, had held several commands during a career spanning more than 40 years.

He was the most senior Iranian soldier killed since a United States missile strike at Baghdad airport in 2020 killed Quds Force chief General Qasem Soleimani.

Monday’s strike in Damascus took place against the backdrop of the Gaza war which began with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel which killed 1,170 people, mostly civilians.

Tehran backs Hamas but has denied any direct involvement in the attack which sparked massive Israeli retaliation against the Gaza Strip.

The Hamas-run health ministry in the Palestinian territory says at least 33,175 people have been killed there during six months of war.

Iran does not recognise Israel, and the two countries have fought a shadow war for years.

The Islamic republic accuses Israel of having carried out a wave of sabotage attacks and assassinations targeting its nuclear programme.