Beirut | At least three fighters attached to pro-Iranian militias have been killed and eleven injured in night-time Israeli air raids on Syrian territory, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) reported Thursday.
The nationality of these fighters was not immediately known, according to the Observatory.
The Israeli raids carried out shortly before midnight targeted several positions in southern Syria and south of the capital Damascus where Iranian militias and the Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah are located, according to OSDH.
The official Syrian agency Sana reported “missile bursts from the Syrian Golan on certain targets in the southern region”.
“Our air defense responded, targeting most of the missiles,” she added, citing a military source.
Israel hit around 50 targets in Syria in 2020, according to an annual report released in late December by the Israeli military, which rarely comments on information about its operations in its neighbor.
The Hebrew state has not commented or claimed responsibility for the strikes carried out Wednesday evening.
But these raids represent “clear policy” of Israel, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in November.
Since the start of the war in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes, targeting government troops, Iranian allied forces and Hezbollah fighters.
The Jewish state takes a particularly negative view of the presence at its gates of Iranian forces because the Islamic Republic is one of its worst enemies.
The last strikes blamed on Israel in Syria dated back to December 30 and targeted a military position near Damascus, killing a Syrian soldier and injuring several people, according to Sana and OSDH.
Triggered in 2011 by the brutal repression of pro-democracy protests, the war in Syria has grown in complexity over the years, involving several powers and foreign armed groups.
It has killed more than 380,000 people and displaced millions of people.