Over 90 said dead, including 15 Hezbollah operatives, in alleged Israeli strike in Syria
Unverified report from Britain-based war monitor also claims operatives from IRGC-backed Al-Nujaba group among 61 pro-Iran fighters killed in strike on city of Palmyra
A Britain-based Syria war monitor said on Friday that Israeli strikes on the city of Palmyra this week killed 92 pro-Iran fighters after a United Nations representative said they were likely the deadliest to date.
The unverified report from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday’s attack targeted three sites in Palmyra, with one hitting a meeting of pro-Iranian groups that also involved commanders from Iraq’s Al-Nujaba group and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The toll has risen to “92 dead: 61 Syrian pro-Iran fighters,” 11 of them working for Hezbollah, “and 27 foreign nationals mostly from Al-Nujaba, plus four from Hezbollah,” the Observatory said.
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.
The UN deputy special envoy to Syria, Najat Rochdi, told the Security Council on Thursday that the raid was “likely the deadliest Israeli strike in Syria to date.”
The Observatory said the strikes also targeted “a weapons depot near the industrial area” in Palmyra, a modern city adjacent to globally renowned Greco-Roman ruins.
Israel, which rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria, is believed to have carried out hundreds of strikes since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Lebanon’s Hezbollah terror group.
Since Hamas’s brutal October 7 massacre last year and the ensuing military campaigns against the Palestinian terror group in Gaza along with Hezbollah in Lebanon, Israel has escalated its strikes on Iranian-backed terror targets in Syria and has also struck Syrian army air defenses and some Syrian forces.
Israel has killed many of Hezbollah’s senior commanders in over a year of conflict, which began when the terror group began attacking Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis on October 8, 2023.
