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
Syrian government vows to protect Kurds in Aleppo, accuses SDF of planting explosives
- Kurdish-led group targeting neighborhoods with mortars, machine guns, Ministry of Defense says
- Army declares Ashrafieh, Sheikh Maqsoud ‘closed military zone’ after hundreds of civilians evacuated
LONDON: The Syrian government on Wednesday affirmed its commitment to protect all citizens, including Kurds, as armed tensions in Aleppo between the Syrian army and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces continued for a fourth day.
The Ministry of Defense accused the SDF of planting explosives on roads and setting booby traps in the Sheikh Maqsoud and Ashrafieh neighborhoods, and bombarding them with mortar shells and heavy machine gun fire.
The army designated the two neighborhoods a “closed military zone” after the Syrian Arab Red Crescent evacuated 850 civilians from the area.
The government said in a statement that the SDF played no role in the city’s security and military affairs.
“This confirms that the exclusive responsibility for maintaining security and protecting residents falls upon the Syrian state and its legitimate institutions, in accordance with the constitution and applicable laws,” it said.
Protecting all citizens, including Kurds, was a non-negotiable responsibility upheld without discrimination based on ethnicity or affiliation, it said.
It also rejected any portrayal of its security measures as targeting a specific community, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency.
“The authorities concerned stress that those displaced from areas of tension are exclusively civilians, all of them Kurdish citizens who left their neighborhoods out of fear of escalation,” the statement said.
“They sought refuge in areas under the control of the state and its official institutions, which clearly demonstrates the trust of Kurdish citizens in the Syrian state and its ability to provide them with protection and security and refutes claims alleging that they face threats or targeted actions.”
The government called for the withdrawal of armed groups from Aleppo.
At least three civilians and a Syrian soldier have been killed and dozens more injured in Aleppo since Tuesday. Authorities have accused the SDF of targeting medical and educational facilities.
The escalation in violence has dealt a blow to an agreement between the two sides that was meant to be implemented by the end of last year.
The Syrian government reached an agreement with the SDF in March that included plans to integrate the group’s military, territory and natural resources, including oil fields, into the new government in Damascus.
