Israel Blamed for Overnight Airstrike in Syria

Syria’s official news agency SANA reports that Israel fired “a burst of missiles” at the T4 airbase near Homs, in central Syria, late Wednesday night. It says there were no casualties and that air defenses “intercepted most” of the missiles. There was no mention of damage. In keeping with its general policy, Israel has issued no statements of its own. SANA adds that the missiles were apparently launched from an area where the Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi borders meet. Israel has long maintained that the T4 airbase is used by Iranian forces in the country to assist President Bashar al-Assad in his almost decade-long fight against rebels. It claims that the base is used to smuggle sophisticated weaponry to Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hizbullah, which is known to be threatening Israel with a large cache of ground-to-ground rockets. Wednesday night’s attack was the second airstrike in Syria this week to be blamed on Israel after a lull of over a month following a July 20 raid that killed a Hizbullah operative. The Shi’ite group has vowed to kill an Israeli soldier for every one of its fighters killed by Israel.