Israeli Air Force hits Syrian military facility linked to Eilat drone attack

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The Israel Air Force announced on Sunday that it struck a Syrian military facility located in the Kafr Sousa area in the capital Damascus.

The IAF strike was a response to the recent drone attack on the southern Israeli city of Eilat, which had reportedly launched from the targeted Syrian military facility. The Syrian army claimed it had "confronted the enemy's missiles" and "shot down a significant number of them," in a standard official Syrian statement following Israeli strikes.

Israel Defense Forces said it had targeted a Syrian military command center and assets belonging to the Syrian Aerial Defense Unit. Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that one Syrian soldier was killed and three were injured in the Israeli aerial strike.

The day before, IDF announced it had successfully intercepted two hostile aerial targets that were approaching Eilat from the east.

"Following the sirens that sounded a short while ago in the area of the Shchoret Industrial Zone in Eilat, southern Israel, the IDF Aerial Defense Array cooperated with IAF fighter jets and successfully intercepted two suspicious aerial targets that approached from the east toward Israeli territory," the Israeli military stated. "The sirens regarding rockets and missiles sounded due to the danger of falling shrapnel from the interceptions. No injuries were reported."

Located on the Red Sea, Eilat has been targeted several times by the Houthis and other Iranian-backed regional terrorist proxies since the Hamas Oct. 7 terror attack

Israeli air space is defended by a sophisticated and multi-layered aerial defense system.

In early April, the Israeli military reportedly used a ship-mounted Iron Dome system to neutralize a hostile incoming drone in Eilat for the first time.

Known in Israel as the C-Dome, the naval aerial defense system enables the Israeli Navy to take an active part in the defense of the Israeli skies against enemy drones and missiles.

Over the last decade, Syria has emerged as a battleground between the Iranian regime and Israel.

Iran actively backs the Syrian Assad regime and has invested considerable resources to embed itself militarily in Syria and by arming Hezbollah terror forces in Lebanon and other militias in Syria.

Syria represents a central component in the Iranian regime’s strategy to surround the Jewish state with a “ring of fire,” a reference to Iranian-loyal terrorist proxies along Israel’s borders. In addition, Iran seeks to establish a corridor of Shiite influence from Tehran to the Mediterranean via Syria and Lebanon.

Israel has, for more than a decade, countered the Iranian aggression in Syria with a strategy known as “war-between-wars” to push Iran out of Syria while simultaneously trying to avoid a full-scale war with the Isrnian regime.

The IAF has consequently carried out hundreds of aerial strikes on Iranian and Iranian-affiliated military targets across Syria, eliminating several high-ranking Iranian military officials.

On April 1, Iranian top general Mohammed Reza Zahedi was eliminated in an aerial strike on a building adjacent to the Iranian consulate in Damascus.

Zahedi had reportedly played a prominent role in directing terrorist attacks against Israel through his cooperation with Hezbollah and Palestinian terror groups in Gaza, mainly Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Tehran quickly blamed Israel for the strike and responded by launching over 300 aerial objects (drones and missiles) directly from Iranian territory against Israel.