Israeli strike kills three on Syria coast: monitor

Beirut (AFP): An Israeli strike on a villa on Syria’s coast Friday killed three people, including an Iranian military adviser, a monitor said, in the third consecutive day of Israeli attacks on Syria.

Three violent explosions shook the center of Banias, on the Mediterranean, during the strike at dawn on the villa that sheltered “a group affiliated with Iran,” said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The building was destroyed, killing the Iranian military adviser and two other non-Syrians who were with him, said the Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

On Thursday, Israel killed a Hezbollah fighter in a strike on Syria, close to the Lebanese border, the Observatory said, hours after similar attacks.

Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on targets in Syria since civil war broke out in 2011. The strikes have mainly targeted Iran-backed forces including militants from Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement as well as Syrian army positions.

Iran-backed paramilitaries have bolstered the fighting force of the Syrian regime of President Bashar Assad since the start of the 2011 war.

Tehran says it has deployed forces in Syria at the invitation of Damascus, but only as advisers.

The strikes have increased since Israel’s war with Palestinian militant group Hamas began on October 7.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in Syria. Iran backs Assad’s government and Hezbollah, which supports Hamas.

Syria’s war has claimed the lives of more than half a million people and displaced millions since it broke out in March 2011 with Damascus’s brutal repression of anti-government protests.