Israel strike targets Iran weapons at Syrian port
New US sanctions hit Iranians, Syrians
An Israeli airstrike hit a shipment of Iranian weapons in the Syrian port of Latakia on Tuesday, in the first such attack on the key facility, a war monitor said.
The Israeli raid “directly targeted an Iranian weapons shipment in the container yard,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The observatory, a UK-based organization with a wide network of sources on the ground across Syria, said the raid triggered a series of explosions. It reported “huge material losses” but added there were no immediate reports of casualties.
According to the Syrian state news agency SANA, the strike occurred at 1:23 a.m.
“Our air defenses repelled the Israeli aggression in Latakia,” it said, adding that a number of containers caught fire in the strike.
Latakia is the northernmost of Syria’s main ports, and lies around 230 km north of Damascus.
Photos and footage published by SANA showed a fire in the yard but state television said later that firefighters had brought the blaze under control.
Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes on Syrian territory, targeting government positions as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters.
On Nov. 24, Israeli missile strikes in the west of Homs province killed five people, according to the observatory.
In two separate Israeli attacks in October, five pro-Iranian militiamen were killed near the Syrian capital Damascus while nine pro-government fighters were killed near the
T4 air base east of Palmyra in central Syria, the observatory said.
Tuesday’s strike came as Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad wrapped up a visit to Tehran, where he met with top officials to discuss deepening ties.
In 2019, Syria announced it was planning to turn over the container terminal at Latakia port to Iran.
Earlier this year, Iran said it was planning to establish a direct shipping line between Latakia and one of its southern ports.
The war in Syria is estimated to have killed nearly half a million people and displaced millions more since it began with a brutal crackdown on anti-government protests in 2011.
At a meeting in Jerusalem on
Tuesday with the leaders of Cyprus and Greece, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett alluded to Israel’s covert actions against its enemies.
“We’re pushing back on the bad forces of this region, day and night. We won’t stop for one second. This happens almost daily. In the face of destructive forces, we will continue to act, we will be persistent and we will not tire,” he said.
Separately, the US issued fresh sanctions on Tuesday against 15 individuals and four entities in Iran, Syria and Uganda, according to the US Treasury Department website.
The sanctions target Iran’s counterterrorism special forces as well as Iran’s Gholamreza Soleimani of the Basij Resistance Force, among others, the website showed.