Beirut: Israel killed a Hezbollah fighter in a strike on Syria, close to the Lebanese border, also hitting near Damascus Thursday, a war monitor said, hours after similar attacks.
Hezbollah holds sway over Lebanon’s eastern border with Syria, as well as some regions on the other side of the border including Qusayr, the target of Thursday’s strike.
“An Israeli drone strike on a truck killed a Hezbollah fighter in the Qusayr area near the Syrian-Lebanese border,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
At the same time, Israeli strikes targeted Syrian air defense and radar sites near Damascus, said the Britain-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.
An AFP correspondent in Damascus heard faraway explosions.
Syrian state media did not report the strikes.
Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups have been fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces following the eruption of civil war.
Since Syria’s war began in 2011, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes against its northern neighbor, primarily targeting pro-Iran forces, among them Lebanon’s Hezbollah and the Syrian army.
But the strikes have multiplied during the almost five-month-old war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.
On Wednesday evening, Israel struck near Damascus, killing two Syrian pro-Hezbollah fighters, the Observatory had said.
Last week, an Israeli strike on a truck in Syria near the Lebanese border killed two Hezbollah members, also according to the Observatory.
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in Syria.
Syria’s war has claimed the lives of more than half a million people and displaced millions since it broke out in March 2011 with Damascus’s brutal repression of anti-government protests.
Israel strikes kill Hezbollah fighter near Syria-Lebanon border: monitor
https://arab.news/pnted
Israel strikes kill Hezbollah fighter near Syria-Lebanon border: monitor
- Israel rarely comments on individual strikes but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in Syria
In major policy shift on Syria, UN Security Council lifts sanctions on Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham
- Move reflects evolving Syrian political landscape in the post-Assad era, ending a global freeze on assets, travel ban and arms embargo
NEW YORK CITY: The UN Security Council on Friday removed Al-Nusra Front, the militant group that evolved into Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, from its so-called Daesh and Al-Qaeda Sanctions List.
The move signals a major shift in international policy toward Syria’s evolving political landscape in the post-Assad era, and ends a global freeze on assets, travel ban and arms embargo that have been imposed on the group since 2014.
Al-Nusra Front and Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham were led by Ahmad Al-Sharaa, formerly Abu Mohammed Al-Julani, who is now Syria’s president and was a leading figure in the offensive that toppled the Assad regime.
The consensus decision by the Security Council’s sanctions committee was announced by the UK, which holds the presidency of the Security Council this month and was acting in the absence of the chair of the committee. It followed a request by the new Syrian authorities to delist “Al-Nusrah Front for the People of the Levant.”
The decision means measures that were applied to Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham under Security Council Resolution 2734, adopted in 2024, no longer apply. As a result, UN member states are notrequired to freeze the group’s funds, restrict the movement of its representatives, or block the supply or transfer of arms and related materiel.
Al-Nusra Front was added to the sanctions list for its ties to Al-Qaeda and involvement in the financing and execution of militant activities during the war in Syria. The UN initially continued to treat the group’s successor organization, Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, as a listed alias.
Al-Sharaa has said the group severed all prior transnational jihadist links and is now solely focused on local Syrian matters.
