Israeli strikes on the southern Syria province of Daraa on Monday evening killed at least three civilians and wounded 19 others, Syrian state news agency SANA said.
Earlier, Israeli drones hovered over Daraa and the Yarmouk Basin before targeting Syria’s 132nd Brigade in Daraa.
Syria’s health ministry said that among those injured were four children and a woman.
Witnesses told The New Arab‘s Arabic-language sister site, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, that at least three strikes hit the 132nd Brigade, causing huge explosions at a warehouse formerly used by the regime of deposed president Bashar al-Assad.
In other strikes, Israeli warplanes hit former regime assets in Izraa, where the 175th Regiment is stationed.
“At around 8:50 pm today, I heard the sounds of huge explosions. It later turned out that these sounds were caused by Israeli airstrikes on military assets around the cities of Daraa and Izraa,” local resident Omar al-Hariri told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed. Hariri said that the sites destroyed in the strikes supposedly contained weapons and ammunition.
It is believed that the former Syrian regime sites had been rehabilitated by the forces of Syria’s new administration, who have been seen transporting military equipment to them.
In a statement, the Israeli army said it had targeted “military targets in southern Syria, including command centres and military sites containing weapons and military vehicles belonging to the old Syrian regime”.
“The presence of military assets in southern Syria poses a threat to the State of Israel,” it said, adding the military “will not allow the presence of military threats in southern Syria and will operate against it”.
At dawn on Tuesday, Israeli forces invaded into a village in the western Daraa countryside, the local media news outlet Free People of Houran Gathering reported.
Israeli soldiers, accompanied by heavy machinery, advanced on foot south of the town of Ma’ariya in the Yarmouk Basin region.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syria since the fall of the Assad regime in December, and has expanded its military occupation of Syria’s Golan Heights by moving forces into a UN-patrolled buffer zone.
During the Syrian civil war that broke out in 2011, Israel carried out hundreds of strikes in the country, mainly focused on Iranian-linked targets.
Meanwhile, late on Monday, Syrian and Lebanese officials announced a ceasefire to end two days of deadly cross-border clashes.
The agreement also stipulates “enhanced coordination and cooperation between the two sides”, a statement from the Syrian ministry of defence said.
Lebanon’s president earlier Monday ordered troops to retaliate against the source of gunfire from the Syrian side of the border after more deadly fighting erupted overnight along the frontier.
Lebanon’s health ministry reported that seven Lebanese citizens were killed and another 52 injured in the clashes, including a four-year-old girl.
The fighting happened after Syria’s interim government accused militants from Lebanon’s Hezbollah group of crossing into Syria on Saturday, abducting three soldiers and killing them on Lebanese soil.
Hezbollah denied involvement.
