AP, Beirut :
The Syrian state news agency said Israeli warplanes fired a number of missiles toward the Damascus area yesterday, triggering Syrian air defences that shot down most of them.
“The results of the aggression so far were limited to a strike on one of the warehouses at Damascus airport,” the Sana news agency cited a military source as saying. The attack took place at 11.15pm (2115 GMT), it said.
Syrian state media broadcast footage of what it said were the air defences firing, with bright lights seen shooting across the night sky. Explosions were heard in one of the videos.
Israel has mounted attacks in Syria as part of its effort to counter the influence carved out there by Iran, which has supported President Bashar al-Assad in the war that erupted in 2011.
The last Israeli attack reported by Syrian state media was on December 25, when a missile attack wounded three Syrian soldiers. A senior Israeli official said in September Israel had carried out more than 200 attacks against Iranian targets in Syria in the last two years.
Meanwhile, the US military has begun moving non-essential gear out of Syria but is not withdrawing troops for now, defense officials said amid uncertainty over America’s planned exit from the war-battered nation.
President Donald Trump last month claimed the Islamic State group had been defeated in Syria and said all US troops were “coming back now.”
But in the weeks since he gave the order, and the Pentagon began to implement it, Trump himself and members of his administration have delivered mixed messages about when a troop withdrawal may actually occur. Trump’s national security advisor John Bolton on Sunday announced conditions for a withdrawal that appeared to delay it indefinitely. Adding to the confusion, a military spokesman said the US had already begun “the process of our deliberate withdrawal” from Syria.
Late Friday, Pentagon spokesman Cmdr. Sean Robertson said that Operation Inherent Resolve “is implementing the orderly withdrawal of forces from northeast Syria within a framework coordinated across the US government.”
The withdrawal, Robertson said, “is based on operational conditions on the ground, including conversation with our allies and partners, and is not be subject to an arbitrary timeline.”
