Israel missiles hit Syria town on Golan truce line

DAMASCUS — Israel bombarded a Syrian town near the armistice line on the Golan Heights with surface-to-surface missiles early Wednesday, state media reported, without any immediate mention of casualties.

It is the third time this month that Israel has hit targets inside Syria as it keeps up a bombing campaign against pro-Iranian forces supporting the Damascus government in Syria's more than decade-old civil war.

"The Israeli enemy carried out a strike with several ground-to-ground missiles" fired from the Israeli-occupied sector of the Golan Heights at around 12:30 am (2230 GMT Tuesday) against the town of Quneitra in the UN-monitored buffer zone, the official SANA news agency said, citing a military source.

It said the strike had caused material damage but gave no other details.

Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there had been several explosions in Quneitra "following Israeli strikes on military posts" near the armistice line.

Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes, targeting government positions as well as Iran-backed forces and fighters of the Shiite militant movement Hizbollah.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes but it has vowed repeatedly to prevent its arch foe Iran from extending a footprint in Syria.

On February 17, Israeli artillery in the occupied Golan shelled the town of Zakiya, south of Damascus. On February 9, Israeli warplanes and artillery hit Syrian anti-aircraft batteries in response to a missile fired into Israel.