Israel’s military says it has started hitting Iranian targets in Syria.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says its operation is against the Quds Force – a elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

It provided no details. But on Sunday the IDF said it had intercepted a rocket fired at the Golan Heights from Syria.

Syria’s Sana state news agency says the country’s air defences had repelled “an Israeli aerial attack” in the south.

On Monday, the IDF tweeted that it had “started striking Iranian Quds targets Syrian in territory”.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) says Israeli rockets were targeting “the vicinity of the capital Damascus”.

The SOHR adds that Syria’s air defences were firing their missiles to intercept the rockets.

The operation comes after Israel said on Sunday that a rocket fired at the northern Golan Heights had been intercepted by the Iron Dome defence system.

Israel rarely admits carrying out attacks on targets inside Syria.

But in May 2018, Israel said it had struck almost all of Iran’s military infrastructure there in its such biggest assault since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

Those strikes came after rockets were fired at Israeli military positions in the Golan Heights.