Israel says destroys Syrian army post in Golan

The Israeli army Tuesday destroyed a Syrian regime observation post in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the third such operation in a year, a spokesman said.

The army "destroyed a forward observation post of the Syrian army that was set up in an Israeli area west of the Alfa line in the Golan Heights," spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote on Twitter, referring to the Israeli side of a UN-patrolled buffer zone between both countries.

He said Israeli troops attacked and blew up the post, adding that it would not "tolerate any attempt to violate the sovereignty" of the Jewish state.

There was no immediate report of any casualties.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the beginning of the conflict there in 2011, mostly targeting Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces as well as Syrian government troops, though it rarely acknowledges them.

Its military has said it hit some 50 targets in 2020 alone.

Israel says it is trying to prevent Iran, which has been one of the Syrian government's key allies in the decade-old civil war, from gaining a permanent military foothold on its doorstep.

In early May, Syrian state media and a war monitor said Israel had carried out air strikes in the southern Syrian province of Quneitra, near the border with Israel.

The Golan Heights, a strategic military zone, was seized by Israel from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War.