Syrian air defences down Israeli missiles near Damascus airport — state media

BEIRUT — Syrian military air defences downed several missiles fired by Israel near Damascus airport on Saturday night, Syrian state media said.

"Our air defence systems thwarted an Israeli missile aggression," state news agency SANA cited a military source as saying.

Witnesses at a major trade fair in the capital Damascus said they saw flares shooting up into the night sky, a Reuters report said.

Asked about the SANA report, an Israeli military spokeswoman said: "We don't comment on foreign reports."

Notably, this is not the first Israeli assault on Syria.

The Israeli military reportedly launched hundreds of attacks in Syrian territories since the ongoing conflict broke out back in 2011, but only recently confirmed about 200 of them.

Over the last year and a half, Israeli forces fired more than 800 missiles and mortar shells at targets in Syrian territory according to a statement by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group earlier in September.

According to official military sources, the airstrikes targeted Iranian assets operating in Syria and near the border with Israel.

The United States as well had previously targeted a Syrian military airport upon the alleged use of chemical weapons by government forces.

Israel's air force often targets what it describes as Iranian deployments or arms transfers to Lebanon's Iran-backed Hizbollah movement in the war.

In May too, a military air base in western Syria was hit, state media reported.

The strike targeted munitions depots that allegedly belong to Hizbollah. 

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the strikes were most likely carried out by Israel.