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Israel says struck Iranian targets in Syria 200 times in last two years
 JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel has carried out more than 200 attacks against Iranian targets in Syria in the last two years, a senior Israeli official said on Tuesday, in a rare summary of its campaign.According to regional sources, Israel began carrying out military strikes in Syria in 2013 against suspected arms transfers and deployments by Iranian forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies, both Damascus’s partners in Syria’s civil war. Israeli officials have rarely detailed specific operations. On Tuesday, an Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment after Syria said it shot down rockets fired by Israeli planes at military targets near the city of Hama. But Israeli Intelligence Minister Israel Katz used a speech to give a more general summary of Syria missions, prompted by a military briefing given to local media earlier in the day. "Only just now it was published - in the name of military sources, so I can quote it too - that in the last two years Israel has taken military action more than 200 times within Syria itself," Katz told a conference hosted by the IDC Herzliya college.
Israel has vowed to prevent such a military presence, but officially remains mum on most of the military’s efforts to do so. However, acknowledged that the air force had conducted strikes against 202 targets in Syria, using some 800 bombs and missiles to do so. The 202 targets hit in the Israeli airstrikes since 2017 were mostly shipments of advanced weaponry, as well as military bases and infrastructure, which the IDF officials said drove Iranian forces to abandon some posts. Israel does not acknowledge individual strikes in Syria, though Syrian officials, eyewitnesses and others regularly report on Israeli bombings on facilities in the country connected to the regime’s coalition. On Tuesday, Israel was accused of carrying out fresh strikes in the Hama area, two days after reports of an IDF attack on a base near Damascus. The officers in the briefing did not elaborate on the nature of the strikes or how many of these had been previously acknowledged by Israel, specifically in its Operation House of Cards, an effort to destroy Iranian weapons sites earlier this year. The IDF also noted its significant assistance in the fight against the Islamic State terrorist group in the Middle East. Posted by: Besoeker 2018-09-05 |
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