Airstrikes targeted facilities near Damascus on Sunday, injuring two civilians, the Syrian Defense Ministry announced, blaming them on Israel.

“The Israeli enemy launched airstrikes from the occupied Golan Heights against facilities near Damascus, injuring two civilians,” the ministry said in a statement, without elaborating.

Earlier, state media reported that “air defense systems intercepted enemy targets” in Damascus province.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, “at least four Israeli rockets targeted the Jamraya area, where a scientific research center is located, causing a fire.” The term “scientific research center” usually refers to military or other government facilities.

The Israeli military has launched hundreds of bombings in Syria, the vast majority of them from the air, since the country’s highly complex armed conflict erupted in 2011. It has targeted organizations close to Iran, above all the Lebanese Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas. as well as Iranian officers who are in Syrian territory in an advisory role.

But his operations multiplied after the war broke out in the Gaza Strip in October 2023 between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.

On Friday, 38 Syrian soldiers, seven members of Hezbollah and seven Syrians with paramilitary groups close to Iran were killed in shelling attributed to Israel in the Aleppo region of northern Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a wide network sources in war-torn Syria.

The attack targeted a “rocket depot belonging to Hezbollah” near Aleppo airport, according to the same NGO.

And last Tuesday, an airstrike also attributed to Israel killed 16 people, including an officer in Iran’s elite military Revolutionary Guards, according to the Observatory.

Israel’s political and military leadership rarely publicly comments on operations in Syria, but regularly declares that it will not allow Iran, the Jewish state’s sworn enemy, to build a bridgehead or otherwise expand its foothold on its border.