The Israeli military, which has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since its civil war started in 2011, declined to comment on the latest reported attack.

Syrian official news agency SANA, citing a medical source, said the number of dead “in the Israeli aggression on a number of sites on the outskirts of Masyaf” was “16 martyrs and 36 wounded, including six critically,” updating an earlier toll of 14.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor reported “intense Israeli strikes” overnight, providing an updated of toll of 25 dead including “five civilians, four soldiers and intelligence personnel and 13 Syrians working with pro-Iran groups.”

Three more bodies were unidentified, the Observatory added.

Israeli strikes on Syria since 2011 have mainly targeted army positions and Iran-backed fighters including from Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.

Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence in the country.

The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria, had earlier said the strikes targeted sites “where pro-Iran groups and weapons development experts are stationed.”

The Observatory said “Israeli strikes… targeted the scientific research area in Masyaf” in Hama province and other sites, destroying “buildings and military centres.”

Syria’s SANA news agency, citing a military source, reported that at “around 11:20 pm (2020 GMT) on Sunday, the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack” from the direction of northwest Lebanon “targeting a number of military sites in the central region.”

Air defenses “shot down some” of the missiles, SANA reported.

Missiles and Drones

It was “one of the most violent Israeli attacks” in Syria in years, Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

He said Iranian experts “developing arms including precision missiles and drones” worked in the scientific research center that was hit.

Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani told a media briefing: “We strongly condemn this criminal attack by the Zionist regime on Syrian soil.”

Syria’s foreign ministry condemned the raids, accusing Israel of trying to “provoke a further escalation in the region.”

Israeli raids on Syria surged after Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel sparked war in Gaza, then eased somewhat after an April 1 strike blamed on Israel hit the Iranian consular building in Damascus.

Syria has sought to stay out of the Israel-Hamas conflict, which has raised fears of a broader regional war.

In late August, several pro-Iranian fighters were killed in Syria’s central Homs region in strikes attributed to Israel, the Observatory had said.

Days later, the Israeli military said it killed an unspecified number of fighters belonging to Hamas ally Islamic Jihad in a strike in Syria near the Lebanese border.

The Syrian government’s brutal suppression of a 2011 uprising triggered the conflict that has killed more than half a million people and drawn in foreign armies and jihadists.

Iran-backed groups including Lebanon’s powerful Hezbollah movement have bolstered President Bashar al-Assad‘s forces during Syria’s civil war.

Israeli raids on Syria have also sought to cut off Hezbollah supply routes to Lebanon.

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The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said “12 members of the regime forces, including an officer, were killed following suicide attacks carried out by special forces from the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham group (HTS), targeting regime forces positions in the north of Latakia province” adjacent to Idlib, the last major rebel stronghold in the northwest.

The death toll is the “highest among the regime forces in the region since last September,” according to the observatory.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Observatory, told AFP that the attack was part of “an escalation by HTS since Monday, which included attacks on regime forces on several fronts.”

The Idlib region is subject to a ceasefire brokered by Russia and Turkey after a regime offensive in March 2020. Despite being repeatedly violated, the ceasefire is still largely holding.

HTS controls swathes of Idlib province and parts of neighboring Aleppo, Hama, and Latakia.

More than five million people, most of them displaced, live in areas outside government control in the Idlib region.

HTS, considered a terrorist organization by Damascus, the United States, and the European Union, regularly clashes with Syrian and allied Russian forces.

It is the main rebel organization active in northwest Syria, but there are other groups, some backed by Turkey.

Syria’s war broke out after President Bashar al-Assad repressed anti-government protests in 2011, and has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions, and battered the country’s infrastructure and industry.

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“A commander in the Kurdish security forces was killed and another person was wounded” in an explosion near the prison in Umm Fursan on the outskirts of the city of Qamishli “at the same time that a Turkish drone was flying in the area,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The commander in the Asayish security forces had played “a prominent role in leading military operations against the Islamic State group in Raqa province,” a former bastion of the jihadists in Syria, said the Britain-based Observatory.

The Asayish said in a statement that one of its “leadership comrades” was killed in Qamishli after a Turkish army drone targeted one of its vehicles at a detention center in Umm Fursan.

The Turkish defense ministry told AFP it had no information about the attack.

A local Kurdish news agency reported “the sound of an explosion… resulting from the targeting of a car” in the area.

The incident came a day after Syria’s Kurdish authorities in Hasakeh province released 50 Syrian prisoners accused of belonging to the IS group as part of a general amnesty deal, an official had told AFP.

The Kurds have established a semi-autonomous administration spanning swathes of the north and northeast of Syria.

The US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces spearheaded the battle that dislodged IS jihadists from their last scraps of Syrian territory in 2019.

Turkey sees the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which dominate the SDF, as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which it considers a “terrorist” group.

The Turkish army, which has troops and proxies in northern Syria, regularly carries out strikes in Kurdish-held areas.

Turkey controls two large strips of territory along the border after expelling Kurdish forces in successive campaigns.

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The death toll from the strike in the Wadi al-Kafur area of Nabatieh is one of the heaviest since Hezbollah began exchanging near-daily cross-border fire with Israeli forces after the Gaza war erupted last October.

Egyptian, Qatari, and US mediators have been trying to broker a ceasefire in the war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which diplomats say could help to avert a wider war in which Lebanon would be on the front line.

The dead in the latest strike included “a woman and her two children,” the health ministry said in a statement.

A source close to Hezbollah in the Nabatieh area told AFP they were all civilians.

The Israeli military said the air force had struck a Hezbollah weapons storage facility overnight “in the area of Nabatieh,” some 12 kilometers (seven and a half miles) from the Israeli border.

Hezbollah said it responded with a volley of Katyusha rockets on Ayelet HaShahar, a community in northern Israel.

The Israeli military said there were no reports of any casualties, but the 55 rockets sparked “multiple fires.”

Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati told British Foreign Minister David Lammy in a call there was a “need to pressure the Israeli enemy to stop its direct targeting of southern towns and villages.”

“The current cycle of violence may lead to an escalation with dire consequences,” Mikati told Lammy, according to a statement shared by his office.

The Syrian foreign ministry condemned the air strike, calling it “a blatant crime against Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and a threat to peace and security in the region.”

Earlier, the Israeli military said a “projectile” fired from Lebanon had wounded two soldiers, one of them severely, near Misgav Am, a kibbutz community close to the border.

The killing of senior Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr in an Israeli air strike in late July, swiftly followed by that of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh in an attack in Iran blamed on Israel, has prompted promises of retaliation and fears of a wider Middle East war.

In an effort to avert an escalation, Western and Arab diplomats have intensified efforts for a Gaza truce but ahead of fresh round of talks in Cairo next week, a deal remains elusive.

The cross-border violence has killed 581 people in Lebanon, mostly Hezbollah fighters but including at least 128 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, including in the annexed Golan Heights, 22 soldiers and 26 civilians have been killed, according to army figures.

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Ahmadreza Afshari of the IRGC’s “aerospace advisory forces” in Syria was “martyred because of injuries caused by aerial bombardment,” Guards’ chief Hossein Salami said in a statement carried by state news agency IRNA.

The colonel was transferred from Syria to Iran for treatment following the air strike, the statement said, indicating the incident occurred two to three weeks ago.

In late July, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said an air strike killed three pro-Iran fighters in Syria’s Deir Ezzor province, where Iran wields significant influence.

The area is regularly targeted by Israel and sometimes by the United States.

Responsibility for the strike was not immediately claimed.

A spokesman for the US-led military coalition formed in 2014 to fight the Islamic State jihadist group said at the time that “neither the coalition nor US forces carried out overnight strikes in Deir Ezzor.”

Since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters, including from Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes in Syria, a key ally of the Islamic Republic.

Regional tensions, already heightened by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, intensified further following the July 31 killing of Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh during a visit to Tehran.

Iran blamed Israel for the death of Haniyeh and vowed to avenge it.

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Six children were among the victims of intense shelling of Dahla in Deir Ezzor province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Fighting erupted on Wednesday when pro-Iranian fighters attacked Kurdish-held areas, according to the Britain-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces also reported that 11 civilians, mostly women and children, were killed in Dahla.

The US-backed SDF spearheaded the offensive that defeated the Islamic State jihadist group’s self-declared caliphate in Syria in 2019.

Arab-majority Deir Ezzor province, a resource-rich region that borders Iraq, is bisected by the Euphrates River and is home to dozens of local tribal communities, some of whose fighters joined the SDF in its battle against IS.

Iran has provided military support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad‘s forces through more than a decade of civil war.

The United States has around 900 troops in Syria as part of an anti-jihadist coalition.

Syria’s civil war has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions since it began in 2011 with the repression of anti-government protests.

It spiralled into a complex conflict drawing in foreign armies and jihadists.

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An AFP correspondent in the area said a booby-trapped truck had detonated at a checkpoint inside the city.

“Ten people have been killed including at least four” Turkish-backed fighters, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The attack was the result of “a booby-trapped truck that exploded at the Shatt checkpoint manned by the (Turkish-backed) military police in the city of Azaz,” said the Britain-based monitor, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

A medical source at the Azaz hospital told AFP nine people had been killed, including five fighters and four civilians, also reporting about 20 wounded.

It was unclear who was behind the attack.

Pro-Ankara forces in Syria control two vast strips of territory along the border with Turkey.

Since 2016, Turkey has carried out successive ground operations to expel Kurdish forces from border areas of northern Syria.

In July, north and northwest Syria saw deadly anti-Turkish protests following a rampage a day earlier against Syrian businesses and properties in central Turkey, where a Syrian man had been accused of harassing a child.

Hundreds had demonstrated throughout Ankara-controlled areas, with some armed protesters attacking Turkish trucks and military posts and taking down Turkish flags.

Some even attempted to storm crossing points, clashing with Turkish border guards.

The protests also came as signs emerged of a rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan supported early rebel efforts to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad at the start of the war in 2011.

But he has reversed course in recent years, with top officials from both countries meeting in Russian-mediated talks.

Syria’s civil war has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions since it began in 2011 with the repression of anti-government protests.

It later spiralled into a complex conflict drawing in foreign armies and jihadists.

The post 10 Dead in Car Bombing at North Syria Checkpoint: Monitor appeared first on The Defense Post.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported no casualties in the overnight strikes in Daraa province, which abuts the armistice line separating Syrian and Israeli forces on the Golan.

Syria’s state-run media did not report any strikes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed a “severe” response to Saturday’s strike, which killed 12 youths in a Druze Arab town in the Golan.

“The State of Israel will not, and cannot, let this pass. Our response will come and it will be severe,” he said on a visit to the town of Majdal Shams on Monday.

He was greeted by protests during the visit, which came after mourners gathered in the town to bury the last victim, 11-year-old Guevara Ibrahim.

Israel and the United States have blamed the strike on Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, which has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces since the war in Gaza between Hamas militants and Israel began in October last year.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said a flurry of diplomatic activity has sought to contain the anticipated Israeli response.

“Israel will escalate in a limited way and Hezbollah will respond in a limited way… These are the assurances we’ve received,” Bou Habib said in an interview with Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed.

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Such attacks were frequent early in the war between Israel and Hamas Palestinian militants in Gaza but since then have largely halted.

“Four rockets fell in the vicinity” of Ain al-Assad base in Anbar province, an Iraqi security source said.

Another security official said an attack occurred with “a drone and three rockets” that fell close to the base perimeter.

A United States official said initial reports indicated that projectiles landed outside the base without causing injuries or damage to the base.

All sources spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media.

At least one rocket also fell near a base of the coalition in the Conoco gas field in Deir Ezzor province of eastern Syria, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor.

The Observatory said a blast was heard in the area, but there were no immediate reports of casualties.

The rocket was fired from “zones under the control of pro-Iranian militia” groups, said the monitor, which relies on sources inside Syria.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either attack.

Iran-backed armed groups in Iraq have largely halted similar attacks on US-backed troops in recent months.

The latest attack comes after a security meeting this week between Iraqi and US officials in Washington on the future of the international anti-jihadist coalition in Iraq. Iran-backed groups have demanded a withdrawal.

The US Defense Department said Wednesday “the delegations reached an understanding on the concept for a new phase of the bilateral security relationship.”

This would include “cooperation through liaison officers, training, and traditional security cooperation programmes.”

On July 16, two drones were launched against Ain al-Assad base, with one exploding inside without causing injuries or damage. A senior security official in Baghdad said at the time he believed the attack was meant to “embarrass” the Iraqi government before the security meeting.

For more than three months, as regional tensions soared over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, United States troops were targeted by rockets and drones more than 175 times in the Middle East, mainly in Iraq and Syria.

The Islamic Resistance of Iraq, a loose alliance of Iran-backed groups, claimed the majority of the attacks, saying they were in solidarity with Gaza Palestinians.

In January, a drone strike blamed on those groups killed three US soldiers at a base in Jordan. In retaliation, US forces launched dozens of strikes against Tehran-backed fighters.

Since then, attacks against US troops have largely halted.

Baghdad has sought to defuse tensions, engaging in talks with Washington on the future of the US-led coalition’s mission in Iraq.

The US military has around 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria with the international coalition.

The coalition was deployed to Iraq at the government’s request in 2014 to help combat the Islamic State group, which had taken over vast swathes of Iraq and neighboring Syria.

IS remnants still carry out attacks and ambushes in both countries.

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Turkey began its Operation Claw-Lock in April 2022, claiming it needed to secure its border with northern Iraq, from where it accused Kurdish separatists of launching attacks on Turkish territory.

“We will very soon complete the lockdown of the area of operation in northern Iraq,” Erdogan said, adding that Kurdish forces were now “incapable of acting inside our borders.”

Erdogan said that the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) had been “completely trapped” in both Iraq and Syria, telling young military academy graduates that Turkish forces were “all over them.”

“We will complete the missing points of the security corridor along our southern border with Syria.”

Erdogan’s comments tally with those made earlier this week by Turkey’s Defense Minister Yasar Guler, who said his country was “determined” to clear the border area with Iraq and neighboring Syria of “terrorists.”

Decades-Long Struggle

Turkey has a long history of tensions with Kurdish separatists and has often launched operations in neighboring countries to fight rebels it says are holed up there.

Within Turkey, the PKK has been involved in an on-off armed insurgency since 1984.

Founded in 1978, the Marxist-inspired group is regarded as a terror organization by Turkey and most of its Western allies, including the United States and European Union.

It also has a presence in northern Iraq, as does Turkey, which has operated against the Kurdish group from several dozen military bases there.

Turkey’s incursions into Iraq have frequently strained bilateral ties and caused occasional frictions with its Western partners.

On Wednesday, Iraq denounced fresh incursions by the Turkish army into its territory in the autonomous Kurdistan region, urging Ankara to resolve security issues diplomatically.

In recent weeks, Iraqi local media have reported an increase in Turkish strikes, sparking several fires in border areas. Some reports mentioned Turkish forces establishing new positions.

On Friday, the Turkish defense ministry announced that one soldier had been killed and another wounded by an improvised explosive device in northern Iraq, blaming Kurdish militants.

Diplomatic Overtures

That said, there have been signs of growing rapprochement in recent months.

In March, following a diplomatic visit, Baghdad quietly listed the PKK as a “banned organisation” — although Ankara still demands Iraq does more to fight against the militant group.

And in April, Erdogan made his first visit to Iraq since 2011, where he called on Baghdad to rid itself of “all forms of terrorism.”

Since 2016, Ankara has likewise carried out successive ground operations to expel Kurdish forces from border areas of northern Syria, along with Islamic State group jihadists.

Pro-Turkish forces in Syria now control two vast strips of territory along the border.

After originally aiming to topple the government of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, Ankara has recently shifted focus to preventing what Erdogan dubbed a “terror corridor” opening up in northern Syria.

On July 7, the Turkish leader even suggested he might invite Assad to Turkey “at any moment,” offering an olive branch after the 2011 war severed ties between Ankara and Damascus.

But after Erdogan’s intervention, Syrian diplomats made clear that any normalization of ties would depend on Ankara withdrawing troops from its territory.

Any bid to restore ties between Syria and Turkey “must be built on clear foundations that ensure the desired result,” the foreign ministry in Damascus said on Saturday.

“Foremost of which is the withdrawal of illegally present forces from Syrian territory.”

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