Saturday, October 30, 2021

Reported Israel missile attack targets Syrian-Lebanon highway, Hizballah sites

Syrian state media report that ground-to-ground missiles were fired from Israel on Saturday morning, Oct. 31, toward suburbs of the capital Damascus. No details were offered except to claim that some of the missiles were downed by Syrian air defenses and they injured two Syrian soldiers.

DEBKAfile adds that the main highway from Syria to Lebanon was targeted as well as Hizballah bases in the Dimas area west of the Syrian capital, to curtail Iranian arms deliveries to Hizballah. This latest attack was unusual in that it used precise ground-to-ground missiles for the sake of a high degree of accuracy in attacking Iranian and pro-Iranian targets.


This action came after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s conversation at Sochi with President Vladimir Putin on Oct. 22. The Russian leader informed Israel that Moscow would no longer tolerate air strikes that were capable of destabilizing the Assad regime. He also called on Israel to provide advance notice of forthcoming hits against Iranian targets in Syria at an earlier stage than at present.


A likely consequence of that conversation was the IDF’s resort to extra precise surface missiles for curbing the Iranian military presence in Syria instead of routine air strikes