Syrian Air Defence Thwarts 'Hostile Targets' Over Homs, Quneitra Province - Reports
Syrian Armed Forces Command said late February that its air defences would immediately shoot down any aircraft violating the country's airspace.
Syrian air defence systems have thwarted "hostile targets" over the city of Homs, a SANA reporter said on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, Syrian state television also reported that Syrian air defense systems were repelling an Israeli missile attack in Quneitra province. According to SANA, the attack came from Lebanese airspace and over the Golan Heights.
"The Israeli aggression on the central and southern region is taking place from Lebanese airspace and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights", a correspondent for Al-Ikhbaria said.
Al-Ikhbariya has cited a military source as saying that the air defences prevented any of the "hostile missiles" from reaching the targeted locations.
"Dealing with hostile missiles, and responding to them successfully and professionally, [the air defences] prevented any of them from reaching our targeted locations", the source said.
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) have refused to comment on the media reports about the airstrikes on Quneitra province.
The incident comes a few weeks after the Syrian Army warned that its air defences would shoot down any aircraft violating the country's airspace.
"Any aircraft which violate Syria's airspace will be treated as enemy military targets...They will be tracked immediately after detection and destroyed immediately after violating our airspace," Syrian Armed Forces Command said in a press statement on Saturday.
On 23 February, the IDF confirmed they carried out strikes on Damascus targeting what it called Islamic Jihad positions in Syria.
On 13 February, the Syrian air defence reported that missiles were fired at the Damascus area from the direction of the Israeli-controlled Syrian Golan Heights.
Israel has conducted hundreds of airstrikes against Syria so far, often firing missiles from outside Syria's airspace from the Golan or Lebanon to try to complicate air defence operations. The attacks target what Tel-Aviv claims are "Iranian" or "Iran-backed" forces, which, according to Israeli authorities, threaten the country.
Iran has repeatedly said that its presence in Syria is coordinated with Damascus and does not have to be approved by Tel Aviv.
It has also become a common practice for the Israeli air force, the Russian Defence Ministry says, to use civil aircraft to shield their own fighter jets from the Syrian air defence systems. On 6 February, a civil Airbus-320 with 172 passengers on board was trying to land at Damascus airport during the Israeli airstrikes that night, but landed instead at the Russian airbase in Hmeymim, the Russian military said.
In a similar incident in September 2018, a Russian Il-20 reconnaissance plane with 15 servicemen on board disappeared from radar screens near Hmeymim Airbase in Syria.
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