According to Syrian state television, an Israeli air raid attacked Syria's Latakia port on Tuesday, the second such attack on the vital facility this month.

Since the start of Syria's civil conflict in 2011, Israel has routinely launched airstrikes against its troubled neighbor, primarily targeting Syrian government forces as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah militants.

"At around 03:21 AM, the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression with several missiles from the direction of the Mediterranean... targeting the container yard in Latakia port," the Syrian state news agency SANA quoted a military source as saying.

According to the statement, the impact caused "significant material damage" and resulted in fires.

When questioned about the strike, an Israeli army official stated: "We don't comment on reports in foreign media."

Israel carried out strikes on an Iranian arms shipment at Latakia, in President Bashar al-western Assad's Syrian heartland, on December 7, without inflicting casualties.

That earlier attack, the first on the site since the conflict began, prompted a sequence of explosions, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based monitoring group with a broad network of sources in Syria.

Israeli attacks killed three soldiers and two Syrian militants connected with the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah in November, according to the monitoring group.

While the Jewish state rarely makes public statements about individual strikes against its northern neighbor – with whom it is formally at war – it has confirmed hundreds since 2011.

According to an Israeli army study, it will strike approximately 50 targets in Syria in 2020.

In the worst operation since the attacks began, Israel killed 57 regime forces and associated fighters in eastern Syria overnight on January 13, 2021.

The Israeli military has consistently justified the operations to prevent Iran's arch-foe from establishing a foothold on Israeli soil.

Major General Aharon Haliva, Israel's head of military intelligence, has accused Iran of "continuing to promote subversion and terror" in the Middle East.

Israel has waged a shadow war on Iran's military bases in Syria and sabotaged Iran's nuclear program.

Tehran has been a significant ally of Syria's government during the decade-long conflict.

It finances, arms, and commands various Syrian and foreign paramilitary groups that fight alongside the conventional armed forces, the most powerful of which is Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Since 2011, when the conflict in Syria began with the violent repression of peaceful rallies, approximately 500,000 people have been slaughtered.