Damascus Explosions: Syria Reports Israeli Airstrike [Video]

Explosions in Damascus rocked the capital of Syria for the second time in three days, as reports of the airstrike poured in on social and conventional media.

According to an unnamed source, Israel struck a research center near Damascus which was developing Fateh-110 missiles with advanced guidance systems. Other reports say that the facility was an arms storage depot. Whatever it was, the highly visible explosions near Syria’s capital were filmed and uploaded to YouTube in a matter of hours.

Israel hasn’t given very complete details of the airstrike, but an Israeli military statement acknowledged that it had deployed two rocket defense batteries near its northern border.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry sent a letter Sunday to the United Nations complaining about the attacks within their borders, directly accusing Israel of aggression and saying that several people had been wounded.

“The Israeli attack on military sites in Syria is proof that there is communication between Israel and the terrorist groups who take their orders from al-Qaeda,” said a report on the Syrian state television. The Syrian government has frequently accused the rebel forces of being terrorists.

Late last week, most intelligence sources including the US Department of Defense concluded that Israel had likely conducted an airstrike in Lebanon to stop advanced missiles from Syria being delivered to the Hezbollah terror group.

While being somewhat cagey with details, Israeli officials said that they wouldn’t tolerate the delivery of chemical or advanced weapons to Hezbollah.

Later, both Israeli and US officials acknowledged that a shipment of advanced missiles had been destroyed in a Friday strike near the Damascus airport.

Syria didn’t acknowledge the strike at first. However, with social media recording the many explosions around Damascus, they couldn’t ignore the new bombing.

Here’s video of one of the explosions from global network NewsLIVE:

[Israeli airforce photo courtesy Israel Defense Forces via Wikipedia Commons]