Large explosion rocks Syrian capital Damascus
Syrian state media has blamed Israel for a missile attack on a military installation near the Damascus International Airport which shook the capital in the early hours of the morning.
Israeli intelligence minister Yisrael Katz would not comment directly on the incident, but said any similar strike would be in line with established policy to interrupt the transfer of weapons to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah from Iran and Syria.
A Hezbollah-affiliated station said there were no human casualties in the huge blast near Damascus airport pic.twitter.com/pk6np7MZrv
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) April 27, 2017
Mr Katz told Israel's Army Radio: "It absolutely matches our declared policy, a policy that we also implement."
Israel is widely believed to have carried out several air strikes in recent years on advanced weapons systems in Syria - including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles - as well as Hezbollah positions.
It rarely comments on such operations.
The widely followed Diaries of a Mortar Facebook page, which is run by activists in Damascus, reported several explosions at 3.42am local time which could be heard and felt across the capital.
Syria's state-run SANA news agency said Israel had fired several missiles from inside the Occupied Golan Heights south of the capital, striking a military installation south-west of the airport, which serves both military and civilian flights.
Several explosions and material damage was reported, but no casualties.
It is not clear how Israel was identified as the culprit.
A large explosion has rocked the Syrian capital, followed by a fire near the Damascus airport, Syrian opposition activists and a monitor said.
The explosion was heard across the capital, jolting residents awake, the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights Rami Abdurrahman said.
He said the explosion was reported to have happened near the Damascus airport road.
Activist-operated Diary of a Mortar, which reports from Damascus, said the explosion near the airport road was followed by flames rising above the area.
A pro-government site Damascus Now said the explosion was near the city's Seventh Bridge, which leads to the airport road.
Syria is in the sixth year of a bloody civil war pitting the government of President Bashar Assad and his allies against opposition forces that has left more than 400,000 people dead.
The explosion comes a day after France said that the chemical analysis of samples taken from a deadly sarin gas attack in Syria earlier this month "bears the signature" Assad's government and shows it was responsible.
Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said France came to this conclusion after comparing samples from a 2013 sarin attack in Syria that matched the new ones. The findings came in a six-page report published yesterday.
Russia, a close ally of Assad, denounced the report, saying the samples and the fact the nerve agent was used are not enough to prove who was behind it.
The United States has also blamed Assad's government for the April 4 attack.
The Trump administration ordered the cruise missile attack on the air base and issued sanctions on 271 people linked to the Syrian agency said to be responsible for producing non-conventional weapons.
Syria has strongly denied the accusations.
