ALBAWABA - The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that an Israeli airstrike targeted some sites in the southern region, causing material damage.
“At about 10:50 p.m. on Wednesday, the Israeli enemy launched an aerial act of aggression from the direction of Baalbek city in Lebanon, targeting some military sites in the southern region,” a military source said in a statement to SANA. The source added that the Israeli airstrike led to some material losses.
On the other hand, U.S. warplanes targeted a storage facility in eastern Syria resulting in the killing of nine people, in response to attacks against American personnel, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said.
This airstrike counts for the second time within the span of two weeks that the U.S. has targeted a Syrian facility claiming that it is linked to Iran, which supports an array of armed groups that Washington blames for a spike in attacks on its forces in the Middle East, the New Arab reported.
The United States is making an effort to prevent Iran and its allies from escalating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict into a regional war, but Washington and Tehran could clash as a result of the repeated bombings and strikes any time.
On the other hand, Washington's backing of Israel, which has been waging brutal aggression on Gaza for more than a month, has been linked to the raids on U.S. sites in Syria and Iraq.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that " the U.S. military forces conducted a self-defense strike on a facility in eastern Syria used by Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and affiliated groups. This strike was conducted by two US F-15s against a weapons storage facility,".
"This precision self-defense strike is a response to a series of attacks against US personnel in Iraq and Syria by IRGC-Quds Force affiliates," Austin said, adding that the United States "is fully prepared to take further necessary measures to protect our people and our facilities".
The Deir Ez-zor provincial target had been under U.S. surveillance for months, according to a senior American military official, so the U.S. could choose a moment to launch the hit with "a minimal number of casualties," though it might have still resulted in some.
"We were tracking just a couple (people) max that we don't have any confirmation of just prior to the strike," the official said.
On October 26, the U.S. military also attacked two locations in Syria that it claimed were used by the IRGC and its allies, however, it concluded that no one was injured.
