Syria, Russia remain silent on reported airstrikes near a Russian base in Syria

Airstrikes hit an ammunition warehouse near a large Russian air base in northern Syria, a Britain-based monitoring group and a Russian military blogger close to Moscow’s defense ministry said Thursday.

The strikes hit in the area of the coastal city of Jableh in Latakia province, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that monitors violence in Syria, and Rybar, a popular account on the Telegram message app run by a former Russian Ministry of Defense employee who often appears on state television.

The monitoring group said the strikes were supported by planes believed to be Israeli and that Syrian air defenses and Russian forces were “confronting” the missiles for over 40 minutes. Rybar said that some of Israel’s cruise missiles were shot down by Russian anti-aircraft fire from Russia’s nearby base but that others hit a warehouse used by Syrian and Iranian forces.

The Israeli military, the Syrian government and the Russian Ministry of Defense did not respond to requests for comment.

The reported attack raises the possibility that Russia — an Iranian ally that has sought to distance itself from Iran’s conflict with Israel — could become ensnared in the widening conflict in the Middle East. Russia intervened in Syria’s civil war in 2015 alongside Iran in support of President Bashar Assad, and helped him maintain power with brutal bombardments against rebel-held cities.

Though Russia decreased its footprint in Syria after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, according to officials based in the Middle East, it maintains a sizable presence in the country, including at the Hmeimim air base near the city of Jableh.

Video footage and photographs posted online from Jableh and verified by The New York Times show an explosion in the direction of the air base. The images were taken from a spot roughly 3 miles from the base, according to the Times analysis.

The reports of the strike came amid major Israeli military operations Thursday on multiple fronts against Iranian-backed groups in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon and militants in the West Bank, most of which are part of a network that Iran calls the Axis of Resistance. That network also includes the Syrian government, which Israel has long accused of helping funnel arms to Hezbollah through its shared border with Lebanon.

The reported attack came soon after the arrival of an Iranian plane belonging to the Qeshm Fars airline, according to a news site aligned with the Syrian opposition that is headquartered in Turkey. The United States imposed sanctions on the airline in 2019, citing its regular flights to Damascus “delivering cargo, including weapons shipments” on behalf of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The Guard provides arms to its Axis of Resistance network, including Hezbollah.

Flightradar24, a flight tracking website, showed that a Qeshm Fars flight took off from Latakia soon after 5 p.m. local time Tuesday and landed about two hours later in Tehran.

After Israel ramped up its war with Hezbollah in Lebanon over the past two weeks, U.S. and Israeli officials said that Israel had eliminated about half of the Lebanese group’s formidable stockpile of rockets and missiles. Israel has sought to prevent the group from rearming with the support of its backer, Iran.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for the Israeli military again accused Hezbollah of bringing in Iranian arms via Syria, as social media chatter about the reported strike multiplied.

Charles Lister, director of the Middle East Institute’s Syria and counterterrorism programs, said Thursday that, “By itself, this is just another Israeli strike on another weapons shipment in Syria, but the proximity to Hmeimim is rare.”

“By striking so close to Russia’s flagship base,” he added, “Israel may also be sending a signal that in such zero-sum circumstances, anything is deemed a legitimate target and an acceptable risk.”