According to Syria’s state-run al-Ekhbariya TV, Israeli forces have launched several strikes on a former army barracks in Kiswa, southwest of Damascus.
Israeli aircraft were seen attacking various locations in the village on Wednesday, according to video that Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency uncovered.
A Syrian military source also reported to Al Jazeera that the Israeli army used four helicopters to land in the barracks during the operation.
The Israeli army spent more than two hours at the site, and the source claims that it brought in dozens of soldiers and an unnamed number of pieces of search equipment.
Israeli forces involved in the landing and Syrian army forces did not engage in combat.
Six soldiers were killed by an Israeli drone strike close to Kiswa the day before the operation, and interim interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government has been under increasing pressure from Syrian officials to accuse Israel of trying to retake control of the area.
Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the strike “a flagrant violation of international law and the United Nations Charter” in a statement released on Wednesday.
The attack constituted “a clear violation of the Syrian Arab Republic’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” it added.
Since Bashar al-Assad’s regime was overthrown in December, Israel has launched hundreds of strikes against military installations and assets all over Syria. In a move that was incompatible with Syria’s disengagement agreement of 1974, it has also expanded its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights by seizing the demilitarized buffer zone.
Israel sent 60 soldiers to take control of an area near Mount Hermon, a strategic hilltop close to the Syrian border, according to Syria’s Foreign Ministry on Monday.
Asaad al-Shaibani, the minister of foreign affairs in Syria, criticized Israel’s “military incursion” as part of its “expansionist and partition plans.”
Following the deadly clashes in Suwayda, a province with a high level of Druze, in which 1,400 people died in a week of sectarian violence in July, Israel’s most recent operations came to an end.
Source: Aljazeera
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