Israel launched pre-dawn air strikes near the Syrian capital on Tuesday, state media said citing a military source, at a time of heightened regional tensions over the Gaza war.
Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Israel had targeted a military position that also housed members of Lebanon's Iran-backed armed group Hezbollah, near the town of Kanaker.
Syria's official news agency SANA said that around 4:35 am local time (0135 GMT) "the Israeli enemy carried out air strikes from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting a number of sites in the Damascus countryside".
It cited an unnamed military source as saying the strikes caused only "material damage", without specifying the target.
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes targeting Syria, but it has repeatedly said it will not allow arch foe Iran, which backs President Bashar al-Assad's government, to expand its presence there.
The reported Israeli strikes were the year's first in Syria, where it has intensified attacks in the wake of its war with Palestinian militant group Hamas.
During more than a decade of civil war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces as well as Syrian army positions.
Recent months have seen regular cross-border exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah, a Hamas ally, in southern Lebanon.
Tehran in December accused Israel of a strike in Syria that killed Razi Moussavi, a senior commander in the Quds Force, the foreign operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Ex-Israeli spy who headed Mossad in 1973 war dead at 98
Former Israeli spy chief Zvi Zamir, who headed Mossad during the 1973 Arab-Israel war, has died at the age of 98, the government said on Tuesday.
Zamir, who led the agency between 1968 and 1974, pioneered a strategy that still endures: deploying secret operatives abroad to assassinate Israel's enemies.
"His tenure as director of the Mossad was characterised by extensive action, while dealing with significant challenges," a government statement said, adding that Zamir died in Israel on Monday night.
That includes "the fight against Palestinian terrorism" as well as the "military threat to the State of Israel, which peaked with the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War", it said, referring to the 1973 Arab-Israel conflict.
Mossad led "daring" counter-terrorism operations under his tenure, it said, including global efforts to eliminate the leaders of the Palestinian militant group Black September, which was blamed for the 1972 murder of Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich.
Zamir spearheaded the "Wrath of God" operation to hunt down senior militants Israel blamed for the Munich bloodbath.
On his watch, Mossad also expanded clandestine links with regional powers and recruited sources and spies.
The most prominent among them was Egyptian spy Ashraf Marwan, nicknamed "The Angel".
Marwan, son-in-law of then Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser and adviser to his successor Anwar Sadat, was suspected of being a double agent who alerted the Mossad to an imminent attack on the eve of Yom Kippur in 1973.
On October 6, 1973, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise attack on Israel during the Jewish fast of Yom Kippur to try to win back their lost territories.
Israel prevailed but suffered heavy losses, especially in the initial days of the war. Six years later Egypt became the first Arab state to sign a peace deal with Israel.
Since its creation 75 years ago as a homeland for the Jewish people following the Holocaust, Israel has been in conflict with the Palestinians and its Arab neighbours.
An attack by the Palestinian militant group Hamas on southern Israel on October 7 -- which has spiralled into all-out war in the Gaza Strip -- has evoked parallels in the media with the 1973 conflict.