Blasts rock pro-Iran missile stocks in Syria, reports war monitor

A war monitor reported hearing violent explosions from pro-Iran militias’ missile arsenal east of Syria’s capital Damascus before daybreak on Sunday.

Residents in Damascus heard the explosions, which came from “the warehouses of pro-Iran militias” in a hilly area east of the city, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which depends on a large network of informants within Syria.

“We don’t know if it was from an air strike or ground operation,” Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

During Syria’s more than a decade-long civil conflict, Israel has undertaken hundreds of air attacks on Syrian soil, predominantly targeting Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah combatants, as well as Syrian army sites.

During the night, “the sounds of explosions” were heard on the outskirts of Damascus, according to Syria’s official news agency SANA.

Four Syrian troops and two Iran-backed militants were killed in pre-dawn Israeli air strikes near Damascus last Monday, according to the Observatory, in the latest fatal Israeli air attack on Syria’s capital.

According to the monitor, the air attacks targeted Syrian regime soldiers as well as military installations and weapons stores utilised by armed factions sponsored by Tehran.

With Iranian as well as Russian support, the government of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad has clawed back much of the territory it had lost to rebels early in the conflict, which broke out in 2011 and has pulled in foreign powers and global jihadists.

Israel rarely comments on strikes it carries out on targets in Syria, but it has repeatedly said it would not allow its arch-foe Iran to expand its footprint there.

Syria’s war has killed more than half a million people and displaced millions.