Syria’s air defenses repel a missile attack launched by Israeli warplanes from the Lebanese airspace against the western Syrian city of Hama’s countryside.
The official Syrian Arab News Agency reported that the attack had come precisely 40 minutes past midnight (local time) on Friday (10:40 p.m. on Thursday GMT).
“The Israeli enemy launched an aggression by directing a barrage of missiles from the north of the Lebanese city of Tripoli towards the Masyaf area in the western Hama countryside,” it wrote, citing a military source.
The agency said the country’s anti-missile apparatus managed to intercept and destroy the projectiles midair.
State television, meanwhile, broadcast footage of the successful defensive maneuver.
Citing correspondents and locals, the AFP and Associated Press news agency also reported overflights of the Lebanese airspace by Israeli military aircraft that alarmed residents in the Lebanese capital Beirut.
The so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group, said the Israeli regime had sought to target the Syrian military and its allied anti-terror forces during the attack.
The Israeli regime and Syria are technically at war due to the former’s 1967-present occupation of the Arab country’s Golan Heights.
Starting in 2011, Tel Aviv has also been providing instrumental support to anti-Syria militant and terrorist groups.
The regime has, on numerous occasions, provided safe passage and medical treatment to the Takfiri terrorists fleeing Damascus’ operations into the Golan Heights.
In 2018, it notoriously allowed the evacuation of a shady and highly suspicious Western-backed “aid group,” known as the White Helmets, into the occupied territories. The evacuees, who were spirited out of the Syrian territory right after Damascus found them culpable of staging false-flag chemical attacks in Syria, were all provided safe havens in Western destinations afterwards.
The Israeli air force also regularly targets Syria and its allies’ reinforcements as means of, what Damascus denounces as, slowing down the Arab country’s advances in the face of terrorist outfits.