War observers say Israeli attack on Syria’s Aleppo kills at least 42 people

The attack came hours after Israel struck the Damascus countryside.

Aleppo, Syria:

Israeli airstrikes in Syria’s Aleppo province on Friday killed at least 42 people, including 36 Syrian soldiers, a war observer said, the highest military death toll since the war between Israel and Hamas began.

Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes in Syria since the civil war broke out in 2011, targeting army positions as well as Iranian-backed forces including Damascus and Palestinian Hamas ally Hezbollah.

Attacks have increased since Israel’s war with Hamas began on October 7, and Friday’s attack was the second such attack in 24 hours.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the “Israeli attack” targeted “a rocket depot belonging to Lebanese Hezbollah” near Aleppo airport. The group has a network of sources inside Syria.

According to reports, “42 people were killed, six of them from the Lebanese Hezbollah group” and “36 soldiers”, which was the highest number of Syrian troops in an Israeli airstrike since the war between Israel and Hamas began.

“At around 1:45 a.m., Israeli enemy forces launched an airstrike from the direction of Athriya, southeast of Aleppo,” state news agency SANA reported, citing military sources, adding that “civilians and military personnel” were killed and injured .

When contacted by AFP from Jerusalem, the Israeli military said it “does not comment on foreign media reports”.

The Observatory also reported attacks targeting “defence factories” controlled by pro-Iranian groups elsewhere in Aleppo province.

The attack came hours after Israel struck the Damascus countryside.

Syrian state media said an “Israeli airstrike targeting a residential building” on Thursday killed “two civilians” and caused material damage.

The Observatory said the Sayida Zeinab area, a stronghold of pro-Iran armed groups such as Hezbollah south of the capital, was targeted.

Israel’s strikes in Syria also seek to cut off Hezbollah’s supply routes to neighboring Lebanon.

Worry about spillover effects

According to AFP statistics based on official Israeli statistics, the war between Israel and Hamas began when Palestinian agents in Gaza launched unprecedented attacks, resulting in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, most of them civilians.

Israel’s retaliatory actions have killed at least 32,623 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, Israel has been engaged in almost daily cross-border fighting with Hamas’ Lebanese ally Hezbollah, raising fears of a major conflagration in the region.

Cross-border fighting in Lebanon has killed at least 346 people since October, mostly Hezbollah fighters but also including at least 68 civilians, according to AFP statistics.

Fighting has displaced tens of thousands of people in southern Lebanon and northern Israel, where the military said 10 soldiers and eight civilians were killed.

Hezbollah has been fighting alongside its ally Damascus in the Syrian civil war since at least 2013 and continues to operate in the country.

The Syrian government’s brutal crackdown on a 2011 uprising sparked a conflict that has killed more than half a million people and attracted foreign troops and jihadists.

An attack in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province on Tuesday killed 19 people, mostly pro-Iranian militants, including two Iranian Revolutionary Guard advisers, the Observatory said.

The World Health Organization reported that one worker died during the strike, which the Observatory blamed on Israel but initially did not say who started it.

A US defense official told AFP that the United States “did not conduct any airstrikes” at the time.

Israel rarely comments on individual attacks in Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in the country.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)