Israeli military forces stopped a Syrian drone as it was penetrating the country’s air space on Thursday evening.
“A Patriot anti-ballistic missile was launched … towards a target in the Golan Heights,” the IDF confirmed, according to the Hebrew-language Ynet site.
An air strike less than 24 hours earlier targeted a Hezbollah weapons depot near Damascus that distributed arms to a number of terror groups backed by Iran.
There is also speculation that the air strike targeted Iranian cargo planes on the tarmac. Three or four Iranian cargo planes were reported to have landed at the military air base near the Damascus International Airport only hours before the overnight airstrike that shook up the Syrian capitol. A tweet by Emanuele Ottolenghi, a member of defenddemocracy.org said, “I counted three Iranian transport planes earlier tonight likely delivering weapons to Damascus: Qeshm Fars Air, Pouya Air, and Mahan Air.”
Multiple sources reported an arms depot embedded within a civilian location — Damascus International Airport.
But although the intercepted Syrian UAV was aimed at Israel, the Jerusalem government made no comment about the earlier air strike near Damascus. It is standard Israeli government policy to withhold comment about air strikes outside its own territory.
According to the report, Hezbollah has been receiving the lion’s share of the arms. Regime forces and opposition fighters in Syria both said Israel was behind the chain of explosions that rocked the depot.