Israel strikes Syrian coastal city of Latakia, Assad's power base

Target said to have been a Hezbollah weapons depot

Latakia, Syria, in February this year. Getty Images

Israel launched air strikes on the Syrian coastal city of Latakia early on Thursday, Syrian authorities said, as it intensifies raids on areas under the control of President Bashar Al Assad alongside its campaign against his ally Hezbollah.

State media quoted a military official as saying the overnight attack wounded two civilians and “caused material damage to private property”. The official did not identify the target.

Latakia is near the Alawite Mountains, the heartland of the Alawite minority religious sect that has dominated power in Syria since a 1963 coup. Mr Al Assad has a palace near Latakia and many Alawite officers who control the security apparatus come from there.

Since Moscow's intervention in Syria in 2015, the area has also served as a base for Russian troops. But Latakia airport, regional security sources say, has also been a main receiver of Iranian weapons for Hezbollah, the most powerful militia in the Middle East, which has been both crucial to the survival of Mr Al Assad and to the extension of Iranian influence.

Syrian media outlets opposed to the regime said the target of the raid was a Hezbollah weapons depot, and that it was destroyed. There was no independent confirmation.

Israeli raids on Hezbollah supply lines and personnel linked to the group in Syria have increased since Israel started eliminating much of Hezbollah's command structure over the past several weeks.

In late September, in a warning to Syria's ruling elite to stop co-operating with Hezbollah, Israeli planes attacked a villa in a Damascus suburb regarded as a fiefdom of Maher Al Assad, the President's brother, according to Arab and western security officials. Maher Al Assad heads the army's Fourth Mechanised Division, which has been helping Hezbollah, they said.

Since the outbreak of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Iran, mainly through Hezbollah, has carved out a zone of control in the country, turning it into a logistics, weapons development and manufacturing lifeline for the Lebanese group, security experts say. Syria has also become a launch pad for drug smuggling by Hezbollah-linked cartels.

Israel has responded with thousands of strikes on weapons sites and supply lines in Syria over the past decade, along with drone and roadside bomb attacks. The strikes have killed hundreds of commanders from Hezbollah as well as Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and members of the Syrian military. Israel also bombed a suspected nuclear research site in eastern Syria in 2007.

On September 8, Israeli special forces reportedly mounted a rare ground raid in the central Syrian area of Masyaf, about 240km north of the Israeli border, storming a weapons development site overseen by Iran.

Members of Syria's political opposition who specialise in reconnaissance said Israel is trying to stop Hezbollah from retreating from Lebanon into Syria. It also wants to weaken Iran's ability to activate another front in the fighting in Syria, from where it could attack Israeli troops in the Golan Heights.

Although the Russian intervention restored government control of much of Syria, large parts of the country's north-west and the Euphrates valley in the east remain out of the regime's reach, and fall within the Turkish and US zones of influence.

Over the past three days, Russia has carried out more than 30 air strikes on the north-western province of Idlib, which is controlled by the extremist group Hayat Tahrir Al Sham. Aid workers say 10 people have been killed in the attacks.

Hayat Tahrir Al Sham, which traces its roots to an al Qaeda offshoot, has channels with Turkey, although it has intermittently fought against proxies of Ankara in the region over the past several years.