Israeli and US armed forces reportedly carried out separate airstrikes targeting Iranian-backed groups in Syria within hours of each other on Wednesday, killing a total of 12 fighters.
Syrian state media said Israeli air strikes hit military sites in southern Syria, causing material damage.
“At approximately 22:50 pm today, the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack from the direction of Baalbek in Lebanon, targeting some military points in the southern region, causing some material losses,” official news agency SANA said, quoting a military source.
The Israeli air strikes killed three pro-Iran fighters, as they hit sites belonging to the Hezbollah terror group near the Syrian capital Damascus, a war monitor said.
“Three non-Syrian, pro-Iran fighters were killed in Israeli strikes on farms and other sites belonging to Hezbollah near Akraba and Sayyida Zeinab,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) war monitor.
SOHR, run by a single person, has regularly been accused by Syrian war analysts of false reporting and inflating casualty numbers as well as inventing them wholesale.
Akraba houses a military airport, the monitor said, more than 10 kilometers from Damascus International Airport.
Israel also struck Syrian air defense sites in the country’s southern Sweida province, said the monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.
Tensions between Israel and Hezbollah have escalated to levels not seen since the 2006 Second Lebanon War, as the terror group flirts with opening a northern front against Israel following the war launched by the IDF to eliminate Hamas after the October 7 onslaught from Gaza that killed some 1,400 people, most of them civilians, and took more than 240 hostages in Gaza.
Hezbollah has conducted and overseen daily assaults on Israel’s northern border from Lebanon but has stopped short of launching a full-scale campaign.
Israel, too, has attempted to walk a fine line, responding with significant firepower to attacks and attempted attacks, while trying to avoid actions that would escalate the conflict as it seeks to keep its focus on Gaza.
The persistent skirmishes along the border have resulted in two civilian deaths on the Israeli side, as well as the deaths of six IDF soldiers.
According to AFP, at least 81 people have been killed on the Lebanese side. The toll includes at least 60 Hezbollah members, eight Palestinian terrorists, a number of civilians and one Reuters journalist.
Israel has also struck Syria several times in the past month.
Last month, Israeli strikes put Syria’s two main airports in Damascus and Aleppo out of service several times in two weeks.
During more than a decade of civil war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its northern neighbor, primarily targeting Hezbollah fighters and other Iran-backed forces as well as Syrian army positions.
No comments:
Post a Comment