DAMASCUS, Syria -- Syria's state media said Saturday that Israel launched a missile attack on Damascus International Airport, adding that air defenses shot down some of them.
The report came as U.S.-backed Syrian forces entered an eastern village held by the Islamic State extremist group. Intense clashes were ongoing Saturday.
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the missile attack targeted an arms depot near the airport after new weapons recently arrived for the Iranians or for Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group.
Israel rarely acknowledges strikes inside Syria but has said it would use military action to prevent weapons transfers to its enemies.
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Israel is alarmed by the expansion of operations by Iran and Hezbollah in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad in that country's 7-year-old civil war.
Elsewhere, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said its fighters stormed the eastern village of Bagouz and were close to the center of the village Saturday. The group added that it plans to open another front in the Sousseh area along the Euphrates river to increase pressure on the extremists.
The Syrian Democratic Forces, with the help of the U.S.-led coalition, launched an offensive last week to capture the last pocket held by the Islamic State in Syria. The Kurdish-led forces have been among the most effective in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria, forcing the militants out of much of the country's east.
Despite losing most of the territory it held between Iraq and Syria since its peak in 2014, the jihadi Islamic State remains a disruptive force in both countries. Its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, urged his followers to "persevere" in an audio tape attributed to him last month.
The Islamic State-linked Aamaq news agency said the group's gunmen targeted advancing Syrian Democratic Forces fighters in the Bagouz area with mortar rounds, roadside bombs and sniper fire inflicting many casualties among them.
The Syrian Democratic Forces commander of the operation in Bagouz, who identified himself as Shergo, said in a video statement that the fighting is intense from both sides and that his fighters were in control of almost half of the village.
"We will take all this place from ISIS," Shergo said in English, using an acronym to refer to the Islamic State.
The Observatory said Islamic State fighters are relying on land mines and a network of tunnels in the area to slow the Kurdish-led force's offensive. It said that about 100 women and 30 men, including Islamic State fighters, along with their children, surrendered. The gunmen were taken to tightly secured positions in the area, it added.
Since the Syrian Democratic Forces launched its offensive on the Islamic State-held pocket, 53 extremists and 38 U.S.-backed fighters have been killed, according to the Observatory.
Information for this article was contributed by staff members of The Associated Press.
A Section on 09/16/2018