Report: Israeli airstrikes in Syria kill 3 Iran-backed fighters, wound 10 others

Israeli airstrikes on Syria targeting positions of the army and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah killed three Iran-backed fighters, according to a Britain-based war monitor.

“Israeli strikes have so far killed three pro-Iranian fighters and wounded about 10 others,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.

The war monitor says the strikes targeted “makeshift petrol stations affiliated to Hezbollah in the Homs countryside, and struck weapons depots belonging to the group as well as two Syrian army sites in the Hama countryside.”

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.

Breaking | Explosions have been reported at Hama Military Airport and in areas across the countryside of Homs and Hama in central #Syria pic.twitter.com/DBPnRiUxEw

— Daniella Modos – Cutter -SEN (@DmodosCutter) August 23, 2024

The Syrian defense ministry says the attacks “wounded seven civilians.”

Since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in the country, mainly targeting the army and its Iran-backed allies.

The raids intensified after Hamas’s October 7 massacre on Israel sparked the war in Gaza, then eased after an April 1 strike blamed on Israel hit the Iranian consular building in Damascus killing two generals of the Revolutionary Guard.

Tensions have risen again since the killings of two senior Iran-backed terror chiefs last month, which sparked threats of reprisals from Tehran and its proxies, who blamed Israel.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence.