DAMASCUS (AFP) ― Israel carried out a rocket attack on the Jamraya scientific research center in Damascus overnight, the official Syrian news agency SANA reported Sunday.
The agency did not say whether there were any wounded or dead.
The “Israeli attack aims at loosening the noose around the terrorists in the eastern Ghouta” region, near Damascus, Syrian television added.
There was no immediate comment from the White House in Washington on the reported attack.
If confirmed, the attack would be Israel’s second this week against Syria.
U.S. media reports say Israel targeted a weapons shipment to the militant group Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon overnight Thursday to Friday, but the Jewish state has refused to confirm or deny the bombing.
A diplomatic source in Lebanon said the operation destroyed surface-to-air missiles recently delivered by Russia that were being stored at Damascus airport.
Israel implicitly confirmed it staged an air strike on Syria in late January as President Bashar al-Assad accused the Jewish state of trying to further destabilize his war-torn country.
That air strike targeted surface-to-air missiles and an adjacent military complex believed to house chemical agents, a U.S. official said at the time.
Damascus threatened to retaliate, further fuelling fears of a regional spillover of a civil war the U.N. says has left at least 70,000 people dead since March 2011.
Activists, meanwhile, said the bodies of 62 civilians, including children, were found in the northwest port of Banias a day after an assault by regime troops and the opposition Syrian National Coalition warned against what it called “ethnic cleansing.”
CNN said U.S. and Western intelligence agencies were reviewing information suggesting Israel had launched an air strike overnight on Thursday.
Washington does not believe Israeli warplanes entered Syrian airspace during the raid, it added.
U.S. President Barack Obama, speaking to Spanish-language Telemundo television, said Israel was justified in protecting itself against arms shipments to Hezbollah.
“The Israelis justifiably have to guard against the transfer of advanced weaponry to terrorist organizations like Hezbollah,” he said, without commenting directly on last week’s reported strike.
“We coordinate closely with the Israelis, recognizing that they are very close to Syria, they are very close to Lebanon.”
Lebanon’s military said pairs of Israeli aircraft entered their airspace three times on Thursday night and stayed for two to three hours at a time.
NBC cited U.S. officials as saying the primary target was believed to be a weapons shipment headed for Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite group closely allied with President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
One said the raid was probably tied to delivery systems for chemical weapons, but CNN cited officials as saying there was no reason to believe Israel had struck chemical weapons storage facilities.
A Syrian military source denied the raid had taken place at all, and an Israeli defense official would say only the Jewish state “was following the situation in Syria and Lebanon, with an emphasis on transferring chemical weapons and special arms.”
But a diplomatic source in Lebanon said the operation destroyed surface-to-air missiles delivered by Russia that were being stored at Damascus airport.
