DAMASCUS: The Israeli army carried out air strikes and fired rockets at targets in Syria overnight, causing damage near a military position, the Syrian army said on Tuesday.

Israel’s military has carried out several attacks on the Syrian army and its ally Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah since the start of the conflict in Syria in 2011.

The Israeli air force conducted strikes on the Qutayfeh area northeast of Damascus, causing the Syrian army to retaliate and “hit one of its planes”, the Syrian army said in a statement.

Syrian air defences intercepted one rocket, but several more hit “near a military position, causing material damage”, it added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said the air strikes targeted Syrian army and Hezbollah weapon depots.

The strikes sparked “successive explosions and fires, causing material damage” in the depots, where land-to-land missiles have been stored among other weapons, the Observatory said.

The Syrian army also said Israel launched land-to-land missiles into Syria from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, but it intercepted them.

In a letter to the United Nations, Syria’s foreign minister called on the UN Security Council to “condemn these blatant Israeli aggressions... and to adopt firm and immediate measures to put an end to them”, official news agency SANA reported.

“We have a long-standing policy to prevent the transfer of game-changing weapons to Hezbollah from Syrian territory,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told journalists on Tuesday. “This policy has not changed. We back it up as necessary with action.”

Children dead in regime strikes

Meanwhile, 10 children were among 24 people killed in strikes on a rebel enclave near the Syrian capital on Tuesday, a monitor said as the UN’s humanitarian chief paid his first visit to the country.

Either regime or Russian aircraft were responsible for the raids, the most deadly of which killed 13 civilians including seven children in the Hammuriyeh district of Eastern Ghouta, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Rebels bombarded two districts of the capital in retaliation, with Syrian state media reporting four people were killed.

Eastern Ghouta has been under government siege since 2013 and its estimated 400,000 inhabitants are suffering severe shortages of food and medicine.

The deadliest strikes hit the Hammuriyeh district, while more than 80 people were wounded in the bombardments of the rebel territory, said the Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

The latest bloodshed in Syria’s war came as UN humanitarian boss Mark Lowcock discussed getting aid to civilians.

Lowcock, who took over as under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs in September, met with Foreign Minister Walid Muallem as the UN seeks greater access to besieged populations.

After arriving in Damascus, Lowcock tweeted that he would meet government and “other key stakeholders and see first hand humanitarian situation & response”.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2018