Early on Wednesday, the Syrian army said Israel had conducted airstrikes on a region on the southern outskirts of Damascus where Syrian defectors believe Iran's military presence is high. The second such assault within a week is the airstrikes.
The most recent airstrike killed at least eight pro-Iran militia fighters, a war monitoring group said.
The nationalities of the dead fighters were not immediately known, said the Syrian Human Rights Observatory.
The attack, which struck a strategically significant region hit in the past by Israel, originated along the Israeli-Syrian border along the contested Golan Heights. Only material damage was caused by the aerial bombing, the Syrian military said.
Reuters told Syrian military defectors that an airstrike hit a military base in Jabal Mane Heights near the town of Kiswa, where the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps has long been entrenched, 15 kilometers south of Damascus, in a rough area.
According to a senior military defector, strikes in July also struck towns near Kiswa, where Hezbollah is stationed with other pro-Tehran militias.
Anti-aircraft missiles stationed along the Syrian Golan Heights are defending the region, military sources said.
"We don't comment on these kinds of news reports," an Israeli military spokesman told Reuters. Later, Syrian state TV broadcast footage that it reported was the latest aerial attack.
Over the past two years, Israeli airstrikes have targeted a region extending from Damascus' southern countryside to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, where Israel's rising Iranian presence is seen as a strategic threat.
Last Wednesday, Israel conducted airstrikes in Syria against what it called a large range of Syrian and Iranian targets, saying it would not allow a continuing Iranian military presence close to its borders.
In Syria, the government of President Bashar Al Assad has never officially admitted that Iranian forces are working on his behalf, saying that Tehran only has military advisers on the ground.
Analysts spoken to by The National, including Joe Truman of the Long War Journal, say Israel's escalating air campaign in Syria is part of a policy of deterrence to slowly weaken Iran's military presence, without causing hostilities to escalate significantly.
In recent months, Israeli defense officials have said that Israel will step up its campaign against Iran in Syria, where with the assistance of its proxy militias, Tehran has increased its presence.
