At least six members of pro-Iran armed groups were killed in an apparent Israeli airstrike on a Damascus suburb Monday, Syrian media and an opposition war monitor reported.
The strike comes amid rising tension in the Middle East with Israel's ongoing war on Gaza and a drone attack Sunday that killed three U.S. troops and injured dozens more in northeastern Jordan, near the Syrian border.
Days earlier, an Israeli strike on Damascus destroyed a building used by the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, killing at least five Iranians.
Monday's strike hit the area of Aqraba, on the edge of the southern Damascus suburb of Sayida Zeinab, according to the pro-government Dama Post. The report did not provide other details.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said the strike hit a farm housing members of Lebanon’s Iran-backed militant Hezbollah group and other Iran-backed factions.
"Israeli strikes targeted a base belonging to Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guards, killing six people" including pro-Iran fighters, said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding it was unclear whether civilians were among the dead.
An official with one of the Iranian-backed groups, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss military activities, said six Syrian citizens were killed in Monday's strike. No Hezbollah members were hurt, the official said.
Last month, a presumed Israeli airstrike on Sayida Zeinab killed Iranian Gen. Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria. Israel has also targeted Palestinian and Lebanese operatives in Syria over the past years.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years.
Israel rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, but it has said that it targets bases of Iran-allied armed groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support forces loyal to Syria's Bashar Assad.
Earlier in January, a strike said to be carried out by Israel killed top Hamas leader Saleh Arouri in Beirut.
