BEIRUT: The death toll in Israeli air strikes on Syria has risen to 52, including 38 government soldiers and seven members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, a war monitor said Saturday.
Friday’s strikes fueled concerns of a wider regional conflagration.
They targeted “a rocket depot belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah” near the Aleppo airport in northern Syria, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
It was the latest deadly raid on Iran-backed forces in Syria, where Hezbollah has been backing the government in its fight against opponents since the 2011 Syria civil war erupted.
Israeli strikes on targets in Syria have increased since Israel’s war against the Hezbollah-allied Hamas group in the Gaza Strip broke out on October 7.
Israeli raids also regularly target Hezbollah in Lebanon in retaliation for cross-border fire.
Friday’s strikes killed 38 Syrian soldiers, seven Hezbollah members and seven Syrian pro-Iran fighters, the Observatory said, up from a total of 44 according to an earlier toll.
The number of Syrian soldiers killed was the highest in Israeli strikes since the war with Hamas broke out, said the war monitor, which relies on a network of sources in Syria.
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes, and has neither confirmed nor denied the raids on Syria.
But Israel’s military has said it killed the deputy head of Hezbollah’s rocket unit in Lebanon, Ali Naim, whose death the Iran-backed group confirmed.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on social media that he visited northern Israel on Friday “to closely examine another successful termination like the one that was executed this morning,” in Lebanon and Syria.
Israel’s army would keep up its operations against Hezbollah everywhere, he said, adding: “We will make them pay a price for every attack that comes out from Lebanon.”
Hezbollah, which has a powerful arsenal of rockets and missiles, has exchanged near-daily fire with the Israeli military since Hamas’s unprecedented October attack on southern Israel triggered the war in Gaza.
“Syria and Lebanon have become one extended battleground from the Israeli perspective,” Riad Kahwaji, head of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, told AFP.
Death toll in Israeli strikes on Syria climbs to 52: monitor
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Death toll in Israeli strikes on Syria climbs to 52: monitor
- They targeted “a rocket depot belonging to Lebanon’s Hezbollah” near the Aleppo airport
- Israeli raids also regularly target Hezbollah in Lebanon in retaliation for cross-border fire
WHO alarmed by health workers, civilians ‘forcibly detained’ in Sudan
- The WHO counts and verifies attacks on health care, though it does not attribute blame as it is not an investigation agency
GENEVA: The World Health Organization voiced alarm Tuesday at reports that more than 70 health workers and around 5,000 civilians were being detained in Nyala in southwestern Sudan.
Since April 2023, Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been locked in a brutal conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced 12 million more and devastated infrastructure.
“We are concerned by reports from Nyala, the capital of Sudan’s South Darfur state, that more than 70 health care workers are being forcibly detained along with about 5,000 civilians,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X.
“According to the Sudan Doctors Network, the detainees are being held in cramped and unhealthy conditions, and there are reports of disease outbreaks,” the UN health agency chief said.
The RSF and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North faction allied earlier this year, forming a coalition based in Nyala.
“WHO is gathering more information on the detentions and conditions of those being held. The situation is complicated by the ongoing insecurity,” said Tedros.
“The reported detentions of health workers and thousands more people is deeply concerning. Health workers and civilians should be protected at all times and we call for their safe and unconditional release.”
The WHO counts and verifies attacks on health care, though it does not attribute blame as it is not an investigation agency.
In total, the WHO has recorded 65 attacks on health care in Sudan this year, resulting in 1,620 deaths and 276 injuries. Of those attacks, 54 impacted personnel, 46 impacted facilities and 33 impacted patients.
Earlier Tuesday, UN rights chief Volker Turk said he was “alarmed by the further intensification in hostilities” in the Kordofan region in southern Sudan.
“I urge all parties to the conflict and states with influence to ensure an immediate ceasefire and to prevent atrocities,” he said.
“Medical facilities and personnel have specific protection against attack under international humanitarian law,” Turk added.
