A weapons facility near a Russian air base in a coastal Syrian city was destroyed on Thursday, according to a monitoring group.
Airstrikes hit an ammunition warehouse near a large Russian air base in northern Syria, a Britain-based monitoring group and a Russian military blogger close to Moscow’s defense ministry said on Thursday.
The strikes hit in the area of the coastal city of Jableh in Latakia Province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors violence in Syria, and Rybar, a popular account on the Telegram message app run by a former Russian Ministry of Defense employee who often appears on state television.
The monitoring group said that the strikes were supported by planes believed to be Israeli and that Syrian air defenses and Russian forces were “confronting” the missiles for over 40 minutes. Rybar said that some of Israel’s cruise missiles were shot down by Russian antiaircraft fire from Russia’s nearby base but that others hit a warehouse used by Syrian and Iranian forces.
The Israeli military, the Syrian government and the Russian Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.
The reported attack raises the possibility that Russia — an Iranian ally that has sought to distance itself from Iran’s conflict with Israel — could become ensnared in the widening conflict in the Middle East. Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015 alongside Iran in support of President Bashar al-Assad, and helped him maintain power with brutal bombardments against rebel-held cities.
Though Russia decreased its footprint in Syria after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to officials based in the Middle East, it maintains a sizable presence in the country, including at the Hmeimim air base near the city of Jableh.