Israeli airstrikes kill at least 38 in Aleppo, Syria
CBC
Israeli strikes on the northern Syrian city of Aleppo early on Friday killed 38 people, including five members of Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, two security sources said, the deadliest attacks so far in an intensified Israeli campaign against Iran's allies in Syria.
Israel has ramped up its airstrikes on both Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps in Syria since the Oct. 7 incursion into Israel led by Iran-backed Palestinian faction Hamas.
Tehran and its proxies have entrenched themselves across Syria, including around Aleppo and the capital Damascus.
Israel has repeatedly struck international airports in both cities over the years to disrupt weapons flows to Iran's allies in the region, but strikes since Oct. 7 have been deadlier and prompted Iran to withdraw some of its top officers from Syria.
Syria's defence ministry said Israeli strikes hit several areas in the southeastern part of Aleppo province around 1:45 a.m. local time, killing a number of civilians and military personnel.
It said the airstrikes coincided with drone attacks carried out from Idlib and western rural Aleppo that the ministry described as having been conducted by "terrorist organizations" against civilians in Aleppo and its surroundings.
The Israeli military declined comment.
In a post on X, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said Israel's attacks on Syria were a "blatant and desperate attempt" to expand the war, without saying if there were Iranian casualties.
Three security sources told Reuters that 33 Syrians and five Hezbollah fighters had been killed in the strikes. One of the Hezbollah fighters was a local field commander whose brother had been killed in an Israeli strike on southern Lebanon in November, one of the sources said.
It marks the biggest escalation since the two heavily armed foes fought a month-long war in 2006. A United Nations resolution put an end to the Hezbollah-Israel war in Lebanon, but diplomatic efforts have so far failed to bring an end to current cross-border shelling.
In a separate incident, the Israeli military said on Friday it had killed Ali Abed Akhsan Naim, deputy commander of Hezbollah's rocket and missiles unit, in an airsrike in the area of Bazouriye in Lebanon. It said he was one of the Iranian-backed militia's leaders in heavy warhead rocket fire and said he was responsible for conducting and planning attacks against Israeli civilians.
Israel and Hezbollah have been trading fire across Lebanon's southern border in parallel with the Gaza war. More than 270 Hezbollah fighters and 50 civilians — including medics, civilians and journalists, have been killed in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon. About a dozen Israeli troops and half as many civilians have been killed in northern Israel.
Over 2,000 rockets have been fired from Lebanon into northern Israel since the outbreak of the war in Gaza.
At around sunset Thursday, a barrage of Katyusha and Burkan rockets was fired toward the Israeli village of Goren and Shlomi, a statement from Hezbollah said. Hezbollah's Al-Manar TV said the group had not previously fired Burkan rockets at civilian targets, but was now responding to the recent spate of Israeli airstrikes.
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