• An Israeli air strike has hit poultry farms on Syria’s west coast, the defence ministry says.
• Strikes also injured two civilians, including a woman, the ministry adds.
• The Israeli army say they “do not comment on reports in the foreign media” Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes against its northern neighbour.

The Syrian government’s heartland on the war-torn country’s west coast was hit by an air strike from Israel on Saturday, according to the defence ministry.

“The Israeli enemy carried out an air strike” after daybreak near the town of Al-Hamidiyah, the ministry said, identifying the locations hit as poultry farms, without elaborating.

The strike was carried out from the Mediterranean Sea, west of Lebanon’s northern city of Tripoli, and “injured two civilians, including a woman,” according to a statement.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the facility that was struck had formerly been used to keep farm animals but was now used by Lebanon’s Shiite militant movement Hezbollah, a Syrian government ally.

The Israeli army told AFP on Saturday that they “do not comment on reports in the foreign media”.

Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian of Iran, also a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, condemned the Israeli strike.

“With its attacks, the Zionist entity is trying to portray Damascus as an unsafe city to obstruct the return of displaced Syrians,” he said on Saturday during a visit to the Syrian capital.

Video footage by Syrian’s official news agency SANA showed rubble at what it said was the site of the targeted facility.

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People are seen inspecting the site, where pulverised chunks of concrete and iron lay on the earth in the middle of a field.

Al-Hamidiyah is located south of Tartus, a bastion of the Syrian government and home to a naval port used by Russia, whose armed forces have backed Assad.

Since civil war broke out in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes against its northern neighbour.

The raids have targeted Syrian government troops as well as allied Iran-backed forces and Hezbollah fighters.

Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman said Saturday’s strike targeted “warehouses formerly used to raise animals, and which the Lebanese Hezbollah group was using to transport weapons”.

Syrian air defence systems did not appear to have been deployed, said the British-based monitor, which has a wide network of sources in Syria.

Last month Israeli strikes on Damascus International Airport rendered its runways unusable for weeks.

Aside from the extensive damage to civilian and military runways, the monitor said the strikes targeted nearby warehouses used by Iran and Hezbollah as weapons depots.

The Syrian war has killed nearly 500,000 people and forced nearly half of the country’s pre-war population to flee their homes.

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