Syria intercepts Israeli missile attack                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Syrian media reported on Friday that the air defenses of the Syrian army intercepted Israeli missiles near Damascus.

The official "SANA" news agency stated that "our air defenses confronted hostile targets in the sky of Damascus," adding that they "dropped a number of hostile missiles in the airspace of the southern countryside of Damascus."

AFP correspondents in Damascus reported hearing loud explosions at night.

For its part, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights indicated that the Israeli strikes targeted Iranian bases near Damascus.

This comes in the wake of an attack on May 14 that killed five Syrian soldiers, and another on April 27 that the observatory said killed 10, including six Syrian soldiers, in the deadliest raid of its kind since the beginning of 2022.

Syria has been witnessing a bloody conflict since 2011, which has killed nearly half a million people, caused massive damage to infrastructure, and led to the displacement of millions of people inside and outside the country.

During the past years, Israel launched hundreds of air strikes in Syria, targeting Syrian army sites, Iranian targets, and Lebanese Hezbollah targets.

Israel rarely confirms that it has carried out strikes in Syria, but it reiterates that it will continue to confront what it describes as Iran's attempts to entrench its military presence in Syria.

The Israeli army justifies these attacks as necessary to prevent its archenemy, Iran, from gaining a foothold on Israel's borders.

Tehran confirms the presence of elements of its armed forces in Syria on advisory missions.

Diplomatic efforts did not lead to a political settlement of the conflict in Syria, despite several rounds of negotiations held since 2014 between representatives of the government and the opposition under the auspices of the United Nations in Geneva.