Move FM Global News

TEL AVIV, Israel – At least 15 people have been killed, including six civilians, during the Israeli airstrikes that took place in Syria in the early hours of Monday morning.

Quoting Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, The Times of Israel reported that the airstrikes were launched both from the air and sea, targeting Iranian-linked bases near Homs and at least 10 targets near Damascus, including a base where Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces are headquartered and a weapons research centre.

The group said it was not clear if the six civilians, including an infant, were killed by the attacks near Damascus and in Homs province, or by some other secondary explosion.

While the other nine people killed were said to have been members of pro-Iranian militias, some of them foreign nationals.

The airstrikes on Monday were wide ranging, in an area over 160 km, The Jerusalem Post reported. Strikes were seen in areas from Homs to Damascus. Their extent – and the reports that civilians were killed – raises the stakes, said the Post report. They also appear to show that the Russian-supplied air defence S-300 system was either not effective or not yet turned on.

The attacks came less than a week after a trilateral conference of Israeli, Russian, and U.S. national security advisers was held in Jerusalem, backing America’s military presence in the Gulf region amid escalating tensions between Washington and Tehran. U.S. President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor John Bolton was in attendance.

Syria’s SANA news agency quoted a military source as saying that “Army air defences confronted hostile missiles launched by Israeli warplanes at midnight from Lebanese airspace towards some of our military sites in Homs and the surrounding of Damascus.”