An alleged Israeli airstrike in central Syria killed nine fighters, including six who were not Syrians and some who were loyal to the Lebanese-based Hezbollah terror group, a U.K.-based monitoring group said Tuesday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights gave no details of the nationalities of the foreigners who were killed on a military post in the desert near the historic central town of Palmyra. It said the dead included some fighters loyal to Hezbollah.
Israel said it has been behind multiple airstrikes mainly targeting Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria, who had joined the country’s civil war fighting alongside President Bashar Assad's troops.
Syrian state TV reported the country’s air defenses shot down several missiles launched by allegedly Israeli warplanes Monday night.
The station gave no further details about the attack, the latest of several to hit central Syria in the past three weeks.
The Observatory said late Monday the alleged Israeli strikes targeted Iranian and Iran-backed fighters in the desert near Palmyra. It added that Israeli warplanes were also flying over neighboring Lebanon.
The strikes came hours after Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif was in Damascus, where he met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Syrian counterpart.
Israel declined to comment on the Monday night strikes.