BEIRUT: A monitor of Syria’s war said one person was killed Saturday in an Israeli strike on a vehicle, after reporting overnight raids on a truck convoy entering Lebanon from neighboring Syria.
“An Israeli drone targeted a car on the Damascus-Beirut road near the Zabadani area... leading to the death of a person who was inside,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
There were no reports of an Israeli strike on Syrian state media, and the identity of the person killed was not immediately clear.
Since Syria’s civil war erupted in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in the country, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters, including from Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
The raids intensified after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel sparked war in the Gaza Strip, then eased after an April 1 strike blamed on Israel hit the Iranian consular building in Damascus.
But tensions soared again this week after the assassination of Hamas’s political leader in an attack in Tehran blamed on Israel, and after an Israeli strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs killed Hezbollah’s top military commander.
Late Friday, a source close to Lebanese militant group Hezbollah said Israel carried out strikes on a convoy of trucks entering Lebanon from Syria.
“Three Israeli strikes targeted a convoy of tanker trucks on the Syrian-Lebanese border in the Hawsh el-Sayyed Ali area, injuring one Syrian driver,” the source told AFP.
It was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes in the border area, the source added.
The Observatory also reported overnight Israeli strikes inside Syria near the border with Lebanon, without mentioning any casualties.
The strikes targeted an area near a border crossing “used by Hezbollah to move trucks and group members” between Lebanon and Syria, said the Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.
“One of the strikes targeted a truck convoy,” while another targeted “a farm on the outskirts of Qusayr in Homs province,” the Observatory said.
Hezbollah has a strong presence in east Lebanon’s Bekaa valley, which borders Syria, and in south Lebanon, where it has been launching near daily attacks on Israeli positions since October in support of Palestinian ally Hamas.
The Iran-backed Hezbollah for years has been fighting in Syria in support of President Bashar Assad in his country’s civil war.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence there.
Israeli raids also seek to cut off Hezbollah supply routes to Lebanon.
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