The Times:
Middle East tensions rise after Israeli strike on missile base in Syria
Suspected Israeli cruise missile strikes on military bases and an arms depot in Syria killed scores of regime and possibly Iranian soldiers, according to monitors and state media.
The air-to-surface missiles, said to have been fired from Israeli jets, sent flames into the night sky of northern Syria above the bases near Hama and Aleppo. The blasts were so powerful they triggered earthquake sensors in neighbouring Lebanon and Turkey. Syrian rebel sources said the main target, the Brigade 47 base a few miles from Hama’s city centre, housed the northern command and control centre of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard based in Syria.
The guard has hundreds of officers and advisers helping defend the Assad regime, and backs a further estimated 20,000 Shia militia operatives it has sent in from across the region. However, Israel fears Tehran is also establishing a long-term presence to counter it from Syrian soil.......
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitor, said 26 soldiers were killed, most of them Iranian. Tehran state media initially appeared to confirm the attack, saying 18 Iranians died, but later reported an unnamed official denying that any of its countrymen had been killed.
A Syrian rebel intelligence officer operating in north Homs province not far from Hama said the Brigade 47 base was extensive, partly dug into a hillside, and contained a “scientific research centre” used to produce missiles as well as to house the Revolutionary Guard command. Syrian state media and pro-Hezbollah news agencies in Lebanon reported that a major weapons depot was struck.
The Observatory said it contained surface-to-surface missiles - a category that Iran has provided to Hezbollah in large quantities but which may now be intended for the wide range of Shia militias, including Iraqi, Afghan and Pakistani Shia fighters, who the Guard is supporting in Syria. “The strike hit the Guard sites in the centre and the ammunition warehouses,” the rebel officer, Captain Abdullah al-Zoubi, told
The Times. “An estimate of 80 soldiers and commanders from the Guard and the regime were killed.”......
Senior Israeli officials, who rarely admit military operations in Syria, conspicuously failed to deny suggestions that its air force was responsible for the raids.