At least two people were killed and 19 others wounded after an Israeli air strike on the outskirts of the southern Syrian province of Deraa, the Syrian state news agency, SANA, has reported.
The Israeli military confirmed the strikes Monday night and said it was targeting military sites that contained weapons and vehicles that belonged to the forces of ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
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The Israeli army “is currently striking military targets in southern Syria, including command centres and military sites containing weapons and military vehicles belonging to the old Syrian regime,” an army statement said, adding that the “military assets” posed “a threat to the State of Israel”.
The army said it “will not allow the presence of military threats in southern Syria and will operate against it”.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Israel targeted a military site previously used by al-Assad’s forces but now used by the army of Syria’s new government.
However, this is not the first time Israel has targeted the southern Deraa province, near the Jordanian border. Earlier this month, it targeted several Syrian military assets in the same area.
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The Israeli military said at the time that the military sites, which had included bases and radar systems, posed a threat that the strike was meant to “eliminate”.
Reporting from Damascus, Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar said four Israeli air strikes targeted Deraa on Monday night.
“This is a strategy of Israel [to] really reduce the country’s military capacity, particularly its defence capacity, and now Israel is going further, saying well it doesn’t want any military presence in the south of Syria,” Serdar said.
“Of course, for the government in Damascus [this] is a huge, huge challenge, so practically, that means they’re not in control of the southern cities of Syria,” he added.
Since al-Assad was ousted, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes in Syria and deployed troops to a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights.
While al-Assad was in power, Israel also routinely attacked Syria, bombing what it said were Iranian and Hezbollah targets.
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