A Damascus-based network reported new details about the August-31 Israeli strikes on Iranian weapons depots near the Damascus International Airport and on Al-Hejana military base on the outskirts of the village of the same name.
According to a security source, the first raid that targeted the airport warehouse followed the arrival of an Iranian shipment of weapons. The warehouse, controlled by the Iranian Quds Force, was almost completely destroyed, and that casualties were much higher than what was reported by the Syrian state-run news agency SANA.
Nine were killed, including seven Iranians, who were pulled from under the rubble, by Syrian soldiers accompanied by patrols of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, who arrived at the site immediately after the attack to remove the rubble and transport equipment.
Officers worked for 8 hours to remove rubble and, according to the source, to extract “parts, possibly electronic, of long-range missiles," which were distributed into 10 small boxes and transported to an unknown location by jeeps belonging to the Revolutionary Guard.
A source from inside the airport hotel, in which those who arrive from outside the country and who did not take a PCR test are quarantined, said that orders arrived to the administration to evacuate one week before the strikes as a “security measure.”
The hotel was indeed damaged by the bombing, and part of it was demolished. The evacuation coincided with the arrival of one of the shipments that were stored in the airport, which was considered as “sensitive”, based on the reinforcement of security with its arrival.
Last February, Israeli fighter jets had destroyed part of the warehouse, however, Iranian militias had restored parts of it and reused it as a warehouse for storing long-range missiles.
The network said that the second airstrike targeted al-Hejana military base, killing more than 17 regime soldiers and IRGC elements, including a colonel, lieutenant colonel, and a number of Syrian and Iranian recruits. The latter were transported on September 2 to Tehran on an Ilyushin plane that belongs to a Syrian airline, according to the source.
Militia presence in the base, which was previously a training center for Islamic Jihad and Hamas members, has increased, using the warehouses for storing their arsenal.
Zaman Al Wasl
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