DAMASCUS: An Israeli air strike in Damascus overnight killed two members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the militant group said on Monday.

Israeli fighter jets launched air strikes on suspected Islamic Jihad positions in Syria just before midnight on Sunday after the militant group and Israeli forces clashed around Gaza earlier in the day.

The strikes in the Adeliyah region outside Damascus targeted what the Israeli military called “a hub of Islamic Jihad’s activity in Syria,” including the research and development of weapons.

Islamic Jihad later said in a statement two of its members were killed in the strike.

Residents said multiple explosions shook Damascus for about 15 minutes as air defenses fired back.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syrian conflict, said the explosions resulted from Israeli bombing of suspected Iranian-backed militias in the vicinity of Damascus International Airport.

The strike escalated the latest round of hostilities, which began around dawn on Sunday, when, Israel said, its troops killed an Islamic Jihad member who was trying to plant explosives near Israel’s border fence with the Gaza Strip.

Video footage shot by a Gaza photographer and widely posted on social media showed what appeared to be the lifeless body of an Islamic Jihad militant dangling from an Israeli military bulldozer as it removed the corpse.

Palestinian health officials and other onlookers said two other Palestinians were wounded by Israeli gunfire directed at a group of people who had approached the area and tried to recover the body.

The images caused an uproar in Gaza, with many social media commentators calling for retaliation.

Islamic Jihad fired a barrage of rockets from Gaza into Israel, setting off air-raid sirens in communities such as Ashkelon. Israel hit back with a series of air strikes in Gaza.

The rockets sent residents of southern Israel running for shelters. Some of the rocket fire was intercepted by Israeli aerial missile defenses, and there were no reports of any Israelis injured.

The Israeli military said that among the “dozens” of targets struck in Gaza were underground infrastructure and compounds in Rafah that had been used to store raw material used for manufacturing rockets.

Shortly before midnight on Sunday, the Syrian state news agency SANA quoted a military source saying that Israeli planes had entered Syrian airspace and targeted areas around Damascus with a wave of guided missiles.

Syrian state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV aired footage of what it said were explosions set off in the Damascus night sky by the air defense system shooting down missiles.

The Syrian military source said most missiles were destroyed before reaching their targets and that the aftermath of the strike was being examined.

Israel frequently strikes at targets inside Syria, but has largely refrained from public admissions of its covert military operations there.

Iran is an ally of Damascus and has offered military advisers and sent militiamen and material support to help President Bashar Assad’s government forces in the nine-year civil war.

Israel considers Iran a national security threat and says it won’t tolerate Iran’s presence on its borders.

In November, Israel targeted two senior Islamic Jihad commanders in a simultaneous attack, killing one in the Gaza Strip and missing the second in Syria. 

At the time, Israeli warplanes fired three missiles at the home of Akram Al-Ajouri, a member of Islamic Jihad’s leadership living in exile. He was not harmed, but his son and granddaughter were killed.

Reuters/AP