Israeli airstrikes wounded eight Syrian soldiers near Damascus, Syria’s defense ministry said today.

Yesterday Thursday late evening, “the Israeli enemy launched airstrikes from the direction of the Syrian occupied Golan, targeting an installation near Damascus (…) injuring eight soldiers,” the ministry said.

Israel very rarely publicly comments on the bombings it launches in Syria on a case-by-case basis. However, it often declares that it is not going to allow Iran, its sworn enemy, to further increase its presence in the territory of Syria, with which it is adjacent.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based non-governmental organization with a wide network of sources in Syria, said Israel hit a government building in an area bordering Damascus that has been used by Lebanon’s Hezbollah since 2014.

Instead, a Reuters news agency source in the Syrian security forces said the bombed site was a short distance from the area of ​​the Sayeda Zainab shrine, where forces from the Lebanese Hezbollah faction and Iran are stationed, but added that the building hit was not it is in the hands of neither Hezbollah nor the Iranians.

The Israeli armed forces have carried out hundreds of bombings in Syria, the vast majority of them from the air, since the outbreak of war in that country in 2011, targeting mainly facilities or forces of organizations close to Iran, or the Syrian army.

Operations of this nature escalated after the October 7 outbreak of the Israel/Hamas war.

On April 19, Israeli shelling was launched against a Syrian army position in the southern part of Syrian territory.

On April 13, Iran launched an unprecedented direct attack on Israel with over 350 drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, most of which were shot down by Israel with the help of the US and other countries , including Britain, France and Jordan.

Tehran has spoken of “legitimate self-defense” after the deadly attack it attributed to Israel that destroyed its consulate in Damascus on April 1.

The highly complex war in Syria has claimed the lives of over half a million people and made millions more refugees and forcibly displaced since March 2011.