The Israeli army announced late Sunday evening that it had launched a series of raids targeting Islamic Jihad sites south of the Syrian capital, Damascus, which the Palestinian movement had quickly exiled.
The army said in a statement that the raids targeted a compound used by the Islamic Jihad movement in the Adliya area of Damascus countryside.
The statement claimed that the Islamic Jihad movement is conducting in the targeted location a process of research and development of combat means compatible with the Gaza Strip.
In addition, dozens of kilograms are produced from materials used as fuel for rocket-propelled grenades, and technical rehabilitation work is being carried out for Islamic Jihad militants from the Gaza Strip and from the northern front.
The representative of the Islamic Jihad movement in Lebanon, Ihsan Ataya, denied the news circulated about targeting a senior leader in the movement in Damascus, and considered that all the rumors were false.
In Damascus, the Syrian official news agency (SANA) quoted an unnamed military source as saying that "Israeli warplanes from outside our airspace and from above the occupied Syrian Golan have targeted the Damascus area with more than a wave of guided missiles."
The source added that "some" of these missiles were "deviated from its path", while the "majority" of what was left "was destroyed" before reaching its targets, "noting that" checking the results of the aggression is still continuing. "
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the Israeli bombing targeted "several sites of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and Islamic Jihad, a few kilometers from Damascus Airport."
According to the Israeli army, the raids near Damascus and Gaza on targets belonging to the Islamic Jihad movement came in response to the firing of the Al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the movement, more than 20 rockets and mortar shells from the Gaza Strip on Israeli towns and settlements, following the martyrdom of a Palestinian militant from the jihad and the occupation of his body.
Since the outbreak of the conflict in Syria in 2011, the Israeli army has launched hundreds of raids in Syria, targeting mainly Syrian army positions and Iranian and other Hezbollah targets, but Israel has rarely claimed these raids.