A missile attack has hit a series of military bases housing Iranian military forces. One of the bases is said to be the recruitment center for Iranian-based Shiite militias.
“Syria is being exposed to a new aggression with some military bases in rural Hama and Aleppo hit with enemy rockets,” an army source was quoted as saying without elaborating.
Reports from the Syrian opposition said 38 regime soldiers were killed and 57 were injured in the attack, citing media outlets with connections to the regime.
An opposition source said one of the locations hit was an army base known as Brigade 47 near Hama city, widely known as a recruitment center for Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias who fight alongside President Bashar Assad’s forces.
State television did not give a location for the explosions but two residents contacted in eastern Hama countryside said the blasts came from a military base reported to be used by Iranian-backed forces.
“If someone thinks that it is possible to launch missiles to Israeli cities or our aircraft, no doubt we will respond and we will respond very forcefully,” he said at The Jerusalem Post conference in New York when asked by Yaakov Katz, Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Post.
“We will keep our freedom of operation in all of Syria. We have no intention to attack Russia or to interfere in domestic Syrian issues. But if somebody thinks that it is possible to launch missiles or to attack Israel or even our aircraft, no doubt we will respond and we will respond very forcefully.”
A clip from Israeli television shows damage to the base where the Iranian forces are recruiting.
Liberman along with other senior Israeli officials have been warning of Iranian entrenchment on the Golan Heights, an area of key strategic importance for the Jewish State, stressing that it is a red line for Jerusalem.
Over the course of Syria’s eight-year long civil war Israel has publicly admitted to having struck over 100 Hezbollah convoys and other Iranian targets in Syria, while keeping mum on hundreds of other strikes attributed to it.
So while Iranian militias were attacking US-backed SDF forces in the north, it appears the Israelis were hitting their bases hard in other locations, including their recruitment centers.
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In an interesting development, the oil-rich territory of Northern Syria, held by US-backed SDF Forces was attacked by Syrian government troops and backed by Iranian militias. The government forces briefly took some villages before the SDF, backed by coalition airstrikes forced them back. It is the first time that Iranian militias and coalition troops have come into contact.
A U.S. army statement sent to Reuters confirmed the attack on SDF forces by what it called pro-regime forces near Deir al-Zor city and said the “coalition used established deconfliction channels to de-escalate the situation”, without elaborating.
“The coalition remains committed to our SDF partners in the campaign to defeat Daesh (Islamic State) in eastern Syria,” the statement added.
Earlier, the Syrian army said it had captured a string of villages east of the Euphrates near the border with Iraq held by Kurdish-led forces, state television said. It gave no explanation for the move.
There have been elaborate “deconfliction lines” separating the coalition forces on the eastern side of the river from the Russian and Iranian backed forces on the western side to prevent clashes, U.S army officials and defense analysts say.
Before the announcement that the Syrian army had taken control of the villages, the SDF said they were engaged in heavy clashes with Syrian army troops on the outskirts of the village of Janin near the Euphrates.
They accused Syrian authorities of seeking to disrupt preparations by the U.S.-led coalition to resume an imminent offensive against Islamic State in several pockets of territory along the middle Euphrates River Valley that they still control.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Thursday he expected a “re-energized” effort against Islamic State militants in eastern Syria in the coming days.
This is an interesting and potentially explosive development in that the Syrian government, after the chemical weapons fallout, is pushing the tempo up and with Iranian support was playing a dangerous game of chicken here.
We saw what happened in February when government forces backed by Russian mercenaries attacked a coalition base. The deconflicting lines have been broken again. And it won’t be the last time.
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