Syria says Israeli drone struck civilian car near Damascus

Syria condemned an Israeli drone strike on a vehicle near the village of Beit Jinn in the countryside west of Damascus on August 22 as a violation of international law, saying the attack wounded a civilian on a public road.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates said the drone hit a civilian car on the road between Beit Jinn Farm and Beit Jinn village, calling the strike a flagrant breach of the country's sovereignty and territorial integrity. Israel's military confirmed it had fired in southern Syria, describing the target as a person preparing terror attacks.

Syrian state television reported that one person was injured, while the foreign ministry said the attack caused several civilian injuries. The Israeli statement did not identify the person it targeted.

Who was in the car

Enab Baladi, citing its correspondent in Quneitra, identified the wounded man as Ammar Saeed Hamada, a member of Syria's Ministry of Defense who was traveling to his hometown of Beit Jinn. A security source who spoke on condition of anonymity said Hamada was attending to personal business and was on leave from his military duties, not carrying out any mission.

This attack constitutes a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic and the integrity of its territory, and a blatant breach of international law, and comes in the context of repeated Israeli attacks on Syrian territory

Israel has framed the strike as a counter-terrorism operation against a man it said was in the final stages of preparing attacks, saying the activity posed an immediate threat to its forces. Syria described the wounded man as a civilian traveling in a civilian vehicle on a public road, and called on the international community to respond.

Personnel from the UN Disengagement Observer Force visited the site of the strike in the Damascus countryside on August 22, according to the Syrian state news agency SANA.

A pattern of strikes

The Beit Jinn area has seen repeated Israeli operations since Israel's incursion into southern Syria on December 8, 2024.

On August 18, Israeli forces moved toward Bat al-Warda Hill near the town, an incursion that caused no casualties or damage, according to al-Ikhbariya. In February 2026, the Israeli army said it had dismantled a weapons storage facility belonging to the Islamic Group, a Lebanese movement, in the same area. An Israeli ground raid on the town on November 28, 2025 set off a firefight and then shelling that killed 13 people, most of them civilians according to Al Jazeera, and wounded 25. Six Israeli soldiers were wounded, three of them seriously.

The drone strike near Damascus came four days after a far larger Israeli attack in the north of the country.

In the early hours of August 18, warplanes hit the runway and storage facilities of the Abu al-Duhur military airport in Idlib province with eight strikes, causing what Syrian state television described as material damage but no casualties. The airport lies about 70 kilometers, or 44 miles, from the border with Turkey. It is considered especially sensitive because of that proximity and Ankara's growing role in rebuilding Syria, according to i24 News.

Israel confirmed responsibility late on August 18. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said Syria had been on the verge of breaching an agreed security understanding by permitting Turkish troops to deploy at what it called an airbase near Aleppo, and that Israel had repeatedly warned of the threat to its security. A Turkish official, speaking anonymously, denied to Axios that Ankara sought a military presence there, saying Israel was inventing pretexts to bomb neighboring countries and destabilize the region.

The United States criticized the airport attack. Tom Barrack, the US special envoy for Syria and ambassador to Turkey, said Washington was deeply concerned by what he called confirmed Israeli airstrikes and described them as an unnecessary escalation. The strikes were the first on Syrian government military assets since March 2026, when Israel hit military camps in the Sweida region after alleged attacks on Druze civilians.

Where the strikes have landed

Israeli forces hold nine posts inside southern Syria, taken since the fall of Bashar al-Assad's government in December 2024, most of them within a UN-patrolled buffer zone along the frontier. After Assad fell, Israeli airstrikes destroyed much of the new army's capability. Officials in Israel view the government in Damascus as a threat, even as it has moved closer to the West.

Turkey condemned the airport strikes and called on the international community to hold Israel accountable. Syria's foreign minister, Asaad al-Shibani, told reporters in Damascus that the strikes were an unjustified provocation and a direct threat to regional and global stability. At a joint news conference with al-Shibani in Ankara on August 6, Turkey's foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, called Israeli attacks on Syria's sovereignty among the greatest threats to its stability.

Qatar, Egypt and Saudi Arabia also issued statements condemning the strikes, according to The Associated Press. Barrack said the government of Syria's interim president, Ahmad al-Sharaa, had neither adopted a predatory posture nor maintained proxy forces and had repeatedly signaled a preference for de-escalation with Israel.

The strikes fit a longer sequence. In March 2025, Israel struck the T4 base in Homs and the Palmyra airbase, both of which Reuters had reported were previously visited by Turkish military delegations, hitting them just hours before a Turkish delegation was due to arrive. In July 2025, Israeli aircraft bombed Syria's Ministry of Defence in the center of Damascus.

Turkey's growing role in Syria

The airport attack has sharpened a rivalry between Israel and Turkey over Syria's future. Analysts have cast the strike as an Israeli effort to prevent Ankara from establishing a military foothold that could restrict Israel's freedom to operate in Syrian airspace. Netanyahu warned Turkey on August 19 that Israel had already told Ankara not to conduct military activity in Syria.

A source in Israel's security establishment told KAN News that Israel had made several attempts to reach an understanding with al-Sharaa through indirect dialogue and acted against the airport only after those talks fell through. Reuters reported that the Mossad chief, Roman Gofman, telephoned Syria's foreign minister on August 14, four days before the strike. A diplomatic source in the Syrian Foreign Ministry denied to Al Jazeera that Syria had entered any security arrangement with Israel.

Ehud Barak, a former Israeli prime minister, accused Netanyahu of being reckless and stupid in escalating tensions with Turkey.

Syria has held Israel fully responsible for the consequences of its repeated attacks, warning that their continuation would raise regional tensions and threaten civilian safety. The foreign ministry framed the drone strike as part of a broader pattern rather than an isolated incident.

Where diplomacy stands

Washington has hosted talks aimed at encouraging diplomacy between Israel and Syria and has said it will continue to do so. Barrack, in his statement on the airport strike, urged all parties to prioritize discourse over further military incidents and said restraint and engagement offered a more constructive course.

Israel has not said how the strike was carried out or explained why it identified the wounded man as a threat.

For now, the two governments have offered accounts that cannot be reconciled. Israel calls the target a militant it stopped in the final stages of preparing an attack. Syria calls the wounded man a defense ministry employee on leave, hit while driving to his hometown.