Israeli forces have conducted a series of strikes on a former army barracks in Kiswa, southwest of the Syrian capital of Damascus, according to Syria’s state-run al-Ekhbariya TV.
Video verified by Al Jazeera’s Sanad fact-checking agency showed Israeli aircraft attacking sites in the village on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, a Syrian military source told Al Jazeera that the Israeli army carried out a landing operation in the barracks with the use of four helicopters.
According to the source, the Israeli army brought in dozens of soldiers and an unspecified amount of search equipment as it spent more than two hours at the site.
No clashes took place between the Israeli forces involved in the landing and the Syrian army forces.
The operation came a day after an Israeli drone strike killed six soldiers near Kiswa, and as Syrian officials in the government of interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa have increasingly accused Israel of seeking to expand its control in the region.
In a statement on Wednesday, Syria’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs called the strike “a gross violation of international law and the United Nations Charter”.
It added that the attack represented “a clear breach of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic”.
Israel has launched hundreds of strikes targeting military sites and assets across Syria since the fall of former leader Bashar al-Assad in December. It has also expanded its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights by seizing the demilitarised buffer zone, a move that violated a 1974 disengagement agreement with Syria.
On Monday, Syria’s Foreign Ministry said that Israel had sent 60 soldiers to take control of an area inside the Syrian border around Mount Hermon, near a strategic hilltop close to the border with Lebanon.
Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs Asaad al-Shaibani decried the “military incursion” as part of an effort by Israel to advance its “expansionist and partition plans”.
The latest Israel operations follow deadly clashes in the Druze-majority Syrian province of Suwayda, where 1,400 people were killed in a week of sectarian violence in July.
Israel has since attacked Syrian troops and bombed the heart of the capital, Damascus, under the pretext of protecting the Druze people.
The post Israel launches new operations in Syria after strike kills soldiers appeared first on Al Jazeera.
