Israeli air strikes on Syria’s northern province of Aleppo have killed more than 40 people, most of them soldiers, according to news agencies and a war monitor.
The fatalities included six members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said as it raised the death toll to 42 and said dozens of people were injured.
The attacks about 1:45am on Friday (22:45 GMT on Thursday) targeted several areas in Aleppo’s countryside, Syria’s Ministry of Defence said. It did not provide casualty figures, only saying a number of civilians and military personnel were killed and property was damaged after Israel and unnamed armed groups carried out the strikes, according to Syria’s state news agency SANA.
The SOHR, an opposition war monitor, said in posts on X that Israeli strikes hit a weapons depot near Aleppo International Airport, resulting in a series of large explosions.
At least 36 Syrian soldiers were killed, it said, adding that Hezbollah weapons depots were located in the area.
The Israeli military has not confirmed the attacks.
Reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, Al Jazeera’s Zeina Khodr said while Syrian state media did not reveal the target, activists on the ground said Syrian soldiers and fighters from Hezbollah, which has a military presence in Syria, were killed.
“Recently, we have seen almost consecutive Israeli strikes in Syria as it widely hits Iranian targets in Syria,” Khodr reported.
Israel for years has carried out strikes in Syria, where Iranian-aligned groups, including Hezbollah, hold sway in eastern, southern and northwestern areas of the country as well as the suburbs around the capital, Damascus.
Its attacks have escalated since the start of the current war in Gaza in October, and it has also struck Syrian army air defences and some Syrian forces.
Israel has recently had “a much more aggressive posture, conducting more, and less constrained attacks, in terms of casualties”, Khodr said.
On Friday, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the strikes were a clear violation of international law and the sovereignty of Syria.
In a statement on Telegram, the ministry said such raids were a serious threat to regional and international peace and security, calling on the international community to condemn them.
Several members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have also been targeted in Syria, where Tehran’s influence has grown since it backed President Bashar al-Assad in the war that erupted there in 2011.
Israel and Hezbollah have been trading near daily fire across their border since the war erupted in Gaza, the biggest escalation since they fought a month-long conflict in 2006.
