Israeli strike hits road linking Lebanon to Syria: Monitor
Strike part of Israeli attempts ‘to cut the supply line to Hezbollah’
BEIRUT: An Israeli strike hit a road linking Syria and Lebanon on Thursday as Israel tries to cut off supply routes of Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, a war monitor said.
Israel has increased it strikes on Syria since it upped its air raids on what it says are targets of Hezbollah in Lebanon more than two weeks ago, notably killing the leader of the Lebanese militant group.
“Israeli aircraft carried out a strike targeting the road linking Syria and Lebanon” in the Quseir region on the Syrian side of the border, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the group with a wide network of sources in Syria, said the strike came as part of Israeli attempts “to cut the supply line to Hezbollah”.
There were no casualties and it was not immediately clear if the road had been cut off in the strike, he said.
Lebanon’s National News Agency reported “enemy drone strikes on the border between Lebanon and Syria”.
The strike comes less than a week after Israeli jets struck the main Lebanon-Syria border crossing of Masnaa in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, cutting off the road to traffic.
The Israeli military said its jets Friday struck Lebanese militant Hezbollah positions near the border.
Human Right Watch on Monday said the strikes near the main Lebanon-Syria border crossing were putting civilians at “grave risk” as they prevented them from fleeing and hampered humanitarian operations.
400,000 people flee over the frontier into Syria.
Increased Israeli air strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon have killed more than 1,200 people and displaced over a million from their homes, according to official figures.
More than 400,000 people - mostly Syrians - who have fled over the frontier into Syria.
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 Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
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.
Israel has struck Syria repeatedly this week.
Syrian state media reported an Israeli attack Thursday on the central provinces of Homs and Hama, after an Israeli strike hit the country’s south the previous day.
The Observatory said they targeted an Iranian car factory in Homs and an area home to air defences and government troops in Hama.
The attack came after state media said Israeli bombardment on Wednesday killed a policeman in southern Syria near the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, in a raid the Israeli army said killed a figure from Hezbollah inside Syria.
A day earlier, a strike blamed on Israel in the Damascus neighbourhood of Mazzeh killed seven civilians, authorities said.
The Observatory said the strike targeted a building used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah, killing nine civilians including four children, as well as four others including two Hezbollah members.
5 civil defence personnel dead in Israeli strike
Lebanon’s state civil defence body said an Israeli strike on Wednesday killed five of its personnel in the country’s south, with the health ministry condemning the latest deadly strike on rescue workers.
Five personnel “were killed in an Israeli strike that targeted the civil defence centre in the village of Derdghaiya as they were inside on the alert to receive emergency calls,” a statement from the body said.
Lebanon’s health ministry said the toll of five was provisional, calling on the international community to take a “firm position” after Israel “renewed its targeting of rescue and ambulance teams”.