Israeli air strikes kill eight Syria troops

BEIRUT (AFP): Israeli strikes killed eight soldiers in southern Syria early Wednesday, Syrian state media reported, in what the Israeli army said was a response to earlier rocket fire.

Persistent rocket and artillery exchanges with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and allied Palestinian factions across Israel’s northern borders with Lebanon and Syria have raised fears of a new front in Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza.

“Around 1:45 am (2245 GMT Tuesday), the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression from the occupied Golan Heights,” Syrian state media said.

They said the strikes also wounded seven soldiers and caused material damage.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 11 soldiers were killed, including four officers.

The Britain-based war monitor said the strikes “destroyed arms depots and a Syrian air defense radar” and also targeted an infantry unit.

The war monitor added that Israeli strikes also hit Syria’s Aleppo airport on Wednesday in what was the fourth such incident in two weeks as regional tensions simmer over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

“Israel renewed its air aggressions on Syria… bombing Aleppo International Airport on Wednesday afternoon,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Syrian transport ministry official Suleiman Khalil said the Aleppo airport runway had been targeted by a strike.

The Israeli army said its “fighter jets struck military infrastructure and mortars belonging to the Syrian army in response to the launches toward Israel yesterday (Tuesday).”

Israeli strikes on Sunday put Syria’s two main airports, in Damascus and Aleppo, out of service, Syrian state media said.

Israel has besieged the Gaza Strip since militants from Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas stormed into Israel on October 7 and went on a rampage that Israeli officials say killed more than 1,400 people.

They also snatched more than 220 hostages in the worst-ever attack in Israel’s history.

Israel has responded with withering air strikes and a near-total land, sea and air blockade of Gaza, where the Hamas-run health ministry says 5,791 people have been killed in the war so far.

During more than a decade of civil war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its northern neighbor, primarily targeting Hezbollah fighters and other Iran-backed forces as well as Syrian army positions.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes it carries out on Syria, but it has repeatedly said it will not allow its arch-foe Iran, which supports President Bashar Assad’s government, to expand its presence.

Israel occupied much of the Golan Heights in the Six-Day war of 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognized by the United Nations.