News - Middle East: The Israeli regime has launched a major wave of airstrikes in Syria.

Local journalists reported that Israeli warplanes carried out at least 20 airstrikes across the countryside of Damascus, Dara’a, and Hama, targeting military sites and warehouses on Friday night.

The strikes included attacks on an old Syrian army camp near Shatha village in Hama, the headquarters of a battalion of the former Syrian army north of Damascus, and military camps in Dara’a.

Explosions were reported over Damascus and its suburbs, including Harasta, where a civilian casualty was confirmed.

Israeli media said some positions in Damascus were targeted for the first time.

Since President Bashar Assad’s government collapsed in December, Syria has also been plagued by a widespread Israeli occupation across large swathes of the country’s south.

It has also been hit by hundreds of Israeli airstrikes, mainly targeting military infrastructure that belonged to the former Syrian army.

Earlier on Friday, Israeli warplanes struck near the Syrian presidential palace in Damascus, marking the regime's second attack in the Arab country this week amid the silence of the ruling Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham-led (HTS) administration.

Israeli authorities have tried to paint the Friday attack as a support for the Druze community, which is clashing with the HTS-backed militants near Damascus in a new wave of sectarian violence under the rule of the HTS administration. The violence has left dozens of people dead or wounded.

This is while the Druze minority had a history of supporting the Assad government and standing against Israeli occupation and expansionist policies, including in the occupied Golan Heights.

The Israeli military operations in Syria come as minister of military affairs Israel Katz said on Sunday that Israel is planning to keep its occupation forces in southern Lebanon and Syria “indefinitely.”

On Thursday, Lebanon's Al Mayadeen TV, citing local sources, said the Israeli army is establishing two new outposts in the countryside of Damascus, facing the Hasbaya district of southern Lebanon.

The intensified Israeli aggression against Syria continues despite HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani's repeated overtures to the occupying regime.

Last Thursday, US Congressman Cory Mills told Bloomberg that after meeting Jolani in Damascus that Syria's de facto leader, seeks to normalize ties with Israel and that he was carrying a letter from him for President Donald Trump.

Source: Press TV