A late Sunday night apparent Israeli aerial attack on Syria has left at least 18 people dead and 36 injured, Syrian state SANA news agency reported Monday.
This marks the highest death toll in Syria from an Israeli strike since the Gaza war began last October. Several explosions were witnessed shortly before midnight on Sunday impacting the Tartous and Hama governorates, particularly in the area of the Masyaf countryside. Israeli strikes in this coastal vicinity is somewhat rare.
The target appears to have been a secretive facility long eyed by the West as part of the Assad government's chemical weapons program.
"About half an hour before midnight, multiple airstrikes targeted the Syrian Military Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) and several nearby buildings. I heard at least eight explosions, followed by the sound of ambulances," a local resident who spoke to CNN described.
Some of the injured remain in critical condition, and the unusually high death toll suggests there may have been employees and staff inside the research center building when it was hit.
Syrian Health Minister Hassan al-Ghabbash described the strikes as a "brutal and barbaric aggression" against a sovereign state.
In the aftermath of the strikes, large forest fires erupted along the nearby Wadi al-Uyun highway in Masyaf. Syrian media sources released the below photograph of fires raging in the area...
The Associated Press has cited a UK-based anti-Assad monitoring group to claim that Hezbollah operatives were among those killed in the attack:
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, said 25 were killed, including at least five civilians, while the others included Syrian army soldiers and members of Hezbollah and other Iran-linked armed groups.
One strike targeted a scientific research center in Masyaf, and others struck sites where "Iranian militias and experts are stationed to develop weapons in Syria," the observatory said. It said the research center was reportedly used for developing weapons, including short- and medium-range precision missiles and drones.
However, the reality is that these weapons program facilities have been targeted by Israel going back many years, in order to degrade the Syrian Army's capabilities, also in the wake of Western allegations that Assad forces had deployed chemical weapons against 'rebel' strongholds.
However, Damascus has long rejected the accusations of Washington and its Western and Gulf allies, saying instead that West-backed jihadi insurgents have launched chemical weapons attacks and carried out mass atrocities.
At this moment, the region is still on edge bracing for a potential Iranian attack on Israel in response to recent major provocations. This fresh Israeli attack on Syria will certainly provoke Tehran and Damascus, and the escalation spiral might not be over.