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Reports: Israel air strikes in Syria hit terror targets
Syrian and Lebanese media reports claim that Israeli air strikes yesterday hit a terror base near the Syria-Lebanon border, while another killed a number of terrorists on the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights.
Yesterday morning, the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Mayadeen and Al-Manar television stations reported that an air strike had hit a car near Quneitra in the Syrian Golan Heights, killing at least two people. According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the operation, which may have been carried out by a drone, targeted members of Hezbollah and the People’s Committees, a pro-Assad militia led by Hezbollah-affiliated arch terrorist Samir Kuntar. He was freed from a life sentence for murdering an Israeli family in Nahariya as part of an exchange for returning the bodies of two Israeli soldiers in 2008.
During the afternoon, Syrian state television reported that an additional air strike had targeted the Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a terror group which backs the Assad regime. The raid is thought to have hit a weapons depot close to the Syria-Lebanon border. However, Lebanese reports said that the explosion was a spill-over from intense clashes between Assad’s troops and opposition fighters near the town of Al-Zabadani.
Israeli officials refused to respond to the reports and would neither confirm nor deny the incidents, saying that they do not comment on foreign media claims.
Israel has remained on the side lines of the Syrian conflict which has raged during the past four years. However, Israeli forces have infrequently responded to cross-border fire, planned attacks and attempts by the Assad regime to smuggle weapons to its Hezbollah allies. Most notably, an apparent Israeli air strike in Syria in January killed prominent Hezbollah figure Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of the late Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh. Meanwhile, in April, Israel confirmed that it launched an air strike to prevent a terror cell from infiltrating the Israel-Syria border.