Israeli Air Strikes Target Weapons Shipments from Tehran to Damascus

Iranwire – Israeli warplanes launched air raids on the Syrian on Tuesday evening, targeting new weapons stores bound for Iranian militia groups inside the country.

A military source in Syria told IranWire that the bombing targeted weapons shipments that had arrived at Damascus International Airport from Tehran in the preceding 24 hours.

The arms and equipment had been conveyed to Syria by at least five Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft belonging to the Syrian Air Force. They were then unloaded and transported to warehouses in the vicinity of the airport.

The source added that the Iranian cargo airline Farsh Air Qeshm and Saha Airlines, which is owned by the Iranian Air Force, had taken part in 10 operations between Tehran and Damascus in the past week alone.

Syrian state media outlets reported Israeli missile strikes on the capital that same night, but not all of them mentioned the arms stores.

“At precisely 22:35 pm today,” SANA News Agency quoted a military source as saying, “the Israeli enemy carried out an act of aggression from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights, on several targets in the vicinity of Damascus. Our air defenses intercepted the attacker’s missiles and downed most of them.”

The losses, the Syrian Ministry of Defense added on Twitter, had been “material only”.

The regime’s Al-Ikhbariya channel also stated that the sounds of explosions heard in Damascus were not the air raids themselves, but the Syrian defense systems to the south. Some of the missile debris fell on residential areas in Hama.

In recent months Israel has intensified its targeting of military and other sites used by Iranian and Iran-backed. On January 13, Israeli air raids on weapons stores and military sites in eastern Syria resulted in the deaths of at least 57 regime forces and pro-Iran fighters.

Israel rarely confirms strikes in Syria, but the Israeli army has said it bombed about 50 targets in Syria last year, without providing further details.