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Israeli airstrikes on the northern province of Aleppo have killed and injured numerous civilians and soldiers, the Syrian Defense Ministry said.
“The Israeli enemy launched an air strike from the direction of Athriya, southeast of Aleppo, targeting a number of points in the Aleppo countryside,” the ministry said in a statement on Friday, without specifying the number of dead.
An opposition war monitor said the attacks killed 42 people, mostly Syrian soldiers. Reuters reported 38 deaths, including civilians and military personnel.
Hezbollah’s media relations office told the Financial Times that five fighters from the Lebanese militant group were killed in the Aleppo attacks.
If the numbers are accurate, the attack would mark the bloodiest Israeli attack in Syria since the war between Israel and the militant group Hamas broke out on October 7.
In its report on the Aleppo attacks, Syria’s state news agency SANA also said two civilians were killed Thursday in an Israeli attack on a building in the Damascus countryside.
Friday’s attack follows another suspected Israeli strike in Syria’s eastern Deir Ezzor province earlier this week, in which local media reported at least 15 people were killed.
The United States was forced to deny carrying out the attacks in Deir Ezzor after Syrian and Iranian media blamed their forces. Syria’s state news agency said at least one civilian was killed in the attack, while Iranian state media said an adviser to the elite Revolutionary Guards was also killed.
Israel did not immediately comment on the attack. He usually does not confirm or deny allegations that he has carried out assassinations or attacks against Iran or Syria.
This week’s attacks represent the latest escalation in regional hostilities that have erupted since the war between Israel and Hamas began.
Over the past decade, Israeli forces have conducted dozens of airstrikes against Iranian-affiliated forces as part of an increasingly open confrontation across the Middle East. Israel has repeatedly struck targets in Syria, including airports in Aleppo and Damascus, as well as weapons depots linked to Tehran and its proxies in Syria.
But tensions between the two states have intensified since the war in Gaza began, leading to more deadly attacks and prompting Iran to withdraw some of its senior officers from Syria.
Meanwhile, an Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon killed a Hezbollah member on Friday, the group’s media relations office said. The attack followed the bloodiest day of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah since October.
Near-daily clashes between Israel and Hezbollah have fueled concerns about a broader regional conflagration and led to the mass evacuation of civilians on both sides of the Israeli-Lebanese border.
UN peacekeepers expressed concern about the escalation and said the organization was “ready to support that process in any way possible, including by convening a tripartite meeting at the request of the parties.”
White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters: “We have also been very, very clear: We do not support a war in Lebanon.”
Additional reporting by Bita Ghaffari in Tehran