Brief Grounding of Flights Reported, No News of Casualties
As they intermittently have done over the course of the past few years, Israeli warplanes today attacked the Syrian capital city of Damascus, striking an area near the Damascus airport. Locals reported explosions in the area, along with a brief power outage and a temporary grounding of flights out of the airport.
There was no news of any casualties, nor any confirmation of what the Israeli planes may have been targeting, though some rebel factions speculated that they were targeting a shipment of weapons to Hezbollah. This is generally the justification for Israeli strikes, though the Israeli government rarely confirms or denies such strikes.
As usual, the Israeli Defense Forces declined to comment on the attack, which would be one of the first confirmed strikes since Russia became formally involved in the Syrian War. Russia has limited Israeli overflights elsewhere in Syria, but is said to have made a deal to coordinate with Israel to prevent inadvertent conflicts elsewhere in the country.
Though Israeli strikes regularly kill some Hezbollah fighters or a few Syrian soldiers, they are generally not considered a serious threat to the survival of the Assad government, so Russia likely would not object to more such limited strikes.
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