BEIRUT: Israeli strikes in Syria on Monday killed seven people, a war monitor said, in the latest such attack in the country against groups.
"Israeli strikes targeted a base belonging to Hezbollah, killing seven people" including fighters, said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Two of those killed were Syrian, including a security escort to an officer, he said, adding it was unclear whether civilians were among the dead in the attack, which struck Sayyida Zeinab, south of Damascus.
The Syrian defence ministry also reported an "air attack" which it blamed on Israel. It said strikes around 1:00 pm targeted multiple locations south of Damascus.
It said in the statement, posted on social media, that "a number of advisers" were killed, before later revising it to remove any mention of the advisers stand.
Hossein Akbari, Iran's ambassador to Syria, denied in a social media post that an advisory centre had been struck or that "any Iranian citizens or advisers (were) martyred" in the attack.
A previous air strike in Sayyida Zeinab in late December, also blamed on Israel, killed a senior Iranian general.
Quds Force commander Razi Moussavi was the highest-ranking general to be killed outside the country since a January 2020 US drone strike in Baghdad killed the elite force's chief Qasem Soleimani.
And on January 20, a strike on Damascus's Mazzeh neighbourhood targeting the Revolutionary Guards' Syria spy chief killed 13 people, the Observatory had said.
They confirmed five members were killed in that attack, which they blamed on regional arch-foe Israel.
Since the outbreak of the Gaza war, Israel and its top ally the United States have faced attacks from, and struck back at, multiple armed groups with violence flaring in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen.
Lebanon's Hezbollah and Israel have traded near daily cross-border fire, and Yemen's groups have launched attacks on Red Sea shipping, sparking US and British strikes on their bases.
US forces in Iraq and Syria have also been targeted more than 150 times, the Pentagon says. Most attacks were claimed by the resistance groups in Iraq.
On Sunday, a drone attack on a remote base in Jordan, near the borders with Iraq and Syria, killed three US troops and wounded 25 others, the US military said.
Biden blamed "radical groups operating in Syria and Iraq" and pledged to hold "all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner of our choosing".
Palestinian movement Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri called the Jordan attack "a message to the American administration" and warned that "the American-Zionist aggression on Gaza risks a regional explosion". — AFP
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