Nine fighters, including six foreigners loyal to the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, were killed on Monday in an Israeli airstrike near Palmyra in Syria’s Homs Governorate, the U.K.-based monitor group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOAR) reported on Tuesday.
The Israeli strike targeted Iranian and Iran-backed fighters, said SOAR, according to the AP.
Israel has in the past acknowledged carrying out airstrikes in Syria, mostly against Iranian and Hezbollah targets.
Syrian state media on Monday reported that the country’s air defenses had downed several Israeli missiles near Palmyra. This was the third such attack reported in the past three weeks, according to the AP.
The alleged attack comes soon after Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif was in Damascus meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad and his Syrian counterpart, according to the report.
Last week, an Israeli drone fired two missiles at a vehicle near the Syria-Lebanon border carrying a pair of Hezbollah members, according to a Hezbollah official. Neither of the Hezbollah members was wounded in the attack, the official said.
