Syria state media says Israel strikes near Homs

A man rides a motorbike past damaged buildings in Homs, Syria November 7, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 11 November 2024
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Syria state media says Israel strikes near Homs

DAMASCUS: Syrian state media reported an Israeli strike on Monday on a village near the city of Homs, a day after a deadly strike on a building in the Damascus area.
“An Israeli aggression” targeted the “surroundings of the Shinshar region south of Homs,” state news agency SANA said, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike targeted a Hezbollah munitions warehouse.
The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria, added that successive blasts had sounded in the warehouse, without providing further details.
SANA meanwhile reported that the motorway connecting Homs to the capital was temporarily cut off after the strike, which “targeted an aid gathering point for displaced Lebanese.”
Israel has since September escalated a campaign targeting the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon following a year of low-intensity cross-border exchanges of fire.
Some 200,000 Lebanese have fled to neighboring Syria to escape Israeli bombardment targeting the country’s south and east, as well as southern Beirut, according to Lebanese authorities.
Israel has also launched successive strikes on Syria, where it has for years been targeting Iran-backed groups including Hezbollah, though it rarely acknowledges individual strikes.
On Sunday, the Observatory reported that Israel struck an apartment belonging to Hezbollah in a stronghold of pro-Iran groups south of Damascus, killing nine people including a commander.
 


Israel army issues new evacuation warnings in Lebanon

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Israel army issues new evacuation warnings in Lebanon

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military issued new evacuation orders for dozens of locations in Lebanon on Tuesday, including a warning for residents in two southern Beirut neighborhoods to stay away from several buildings ahead of imminent military action.
“Urgent warning to the residents of Lebanon, specifically in the villages which names are shown. For your safety you must evacuate your homes immediately,” said a statement by the military’s Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee on Telegram, which listed 50 locations.
Many of the locations were across the south of Lebanon, which Israel regularly targets with the aim of hitting Hezbollah infrastructure.
“You are located near Hezbollah facilities and interests, against which the IDF will operate in the near future,” he told the residents of southern Beirut neighborhoods Ghobeiry and Haret Hreik in another evacuation warning.
Lebanon’s government on Monday took the unprecedented step of banning Hezbollah’s military and security activity, prompting the Iran-backed group to lash out at the decision.
Hezbollah is represented in both the government and parliament, and the move came hours after it announced it had launched rockets and drones toward Israel early Monday to avenge the killing of Iranian supreme leader Ali Khamenei in US-Israeli attacks.
Israel bombarded Beirut’s southern suburbs and dozens of villages in south Lebanon on Monday in response, vowing to make the group pay a “heavy price.”
The Lebanese health ministry said the strikes killed at least 31 people and wounded at least 149.