Syria: Army claim Israeli missiles target sites near Damascus

 There were no injuries in Sunday's air defense action between the Syrian army and an Israeli missile attack on the outskirts of Damascus, according to official media.

State media in Syria said that missile attacks from the direction of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights had attacked a number of unnamed facilities, citing a military source.

The Syrian military source said that "our air defenses confronted the aggressors' missiles and downed some of them with only material losses."

The claim was not immediately confirmed by Reuters. Israeli military officials declined to comment.

In Syria, where Tehran's influence has increased since it started backing President Bashar al-Assad in a civil conflict that broke out in 2011, Israel has been conducting attacks on what it has referred to as Iran-linked targets for years.

Israel's security cabinet minister, Israel Katz, told the nation's Army Radio, "There is a clear policy to prevent Iran from encroaching in Syria, from building an infrastructure that threatens Israel, a terrorist infrastructure that seeks to turn the peaceful Golan Heights border into a war-fighting border."

In large portions of eastern, southern, and northwestern Syria as well as in a number of the capital's suburbs, fighters with ties to Iran, particularly those from Lebanon's Hezbollah, are in control.