Israel said its aircraft struck dozens of Syrian military targets in Syria on Wednesday in retaliation for rockets fired towards Israel a day earlier.
Syrian state media reported two civilians were killed and several others injured in the attacks but said Syria’s air defenses destroyed most of the missiles fired by Israeli jets over the capital Damascus before they reached their targets.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said 11 people were killed, citing their own sources.
Israel’s military said its missile defense system shot down four rockets fired from Syria towards Israel on Tuesday.
“I have made clear that whoever hurts us, we will hurt him,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said early on Wednesday.
On Twitter, Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Avichay Adraee said warplanes attacked dozens of targets, including surface-to-air missiles, headquarters, weapons depots, and military bases.
“At exactly 1:20 a.m. today, Israeli warplanes from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights and the Lebanese Marjayoun targeted the perimeter of the city of Damascus with a number of rockets,” a Syrian military source was quoted as saying by the Syrian state news agency SANA. Marjayoun is a city in the south of Lebanon.