Syria said on Sunday that it had detained a group behind recent rocket attacks on the Mezzeh military airport in Damascus, with investigators tracing the weapons to Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror group backed by Iran.
The Syrian Interior Ministry said security units arrested all members of the group, which it said had carried out several strikes on the airport in recent months, after surveillance of suspected launch sites in several areas of the capital.
The weapons used in the attacks originated from Hezbollah, an ally of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that once had a large military presence across Syria supporting Assad’s army during the country’s civil war, the ministry said.
Hezbollah denied the allegations and said it had no activity or ties with any group inside Syria.
Authorities said they also seized a number of drones the group was preparing to use in further operations.
The ministry said only that the detainees had links to unidentified “foreign entities,” without mentioning Hezbollah or Iran.
Reuters reported in November that Washington was planning to establish a military presence at an airbase in Damascus to help enable a security pact that Washington is brokering between Syria and Israel. The Syrian government denied the report.
IDF reservists of the 55th Paratroopers Brigade operate in southern Syria, in an image published on November 21, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)
Security sources say Hezbollah left behind weapons stockpiles, including drones, in parts of Syria after withdrawing its forces following the collapse of Assad’s rule in December 2024.
After Assad’s fall, Israel stationed troops in southwestern Syria, in a buffer zone between the two countries, in a move meant to repel hostile actors amid the power vacuum surrounding the fall of the Assad regime. On Friday, Israel Defense Forces troops in Syria came under fire, the military said, in the first such incident since Israeli troops deployed to the area. There were no Israeli injuries.
Assad’s fall followed on the heels of a US-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah. That agreement came after two months of open conflict in Lebanon that killed the terror group’s leadership and dealt it a heavy blow. The fighting included an IDF ground operation in Lebanon’s south in a bid to enable the safe return of some 60,000 residents of northern Israel displaced by the terror group’s near-daily attacks.
The rocket attacks began on October 8, 2023 — a day after fellow Iran-backed terror group Hamas invaded southern Israel, sparking the war in Gaza.
