Search

Israel warns Syrian army of supporting Hezbollah following overnight airstrike

Syrian agencies say missiles hit Hezbollah and Syrian army targets, no casualties reported.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Israel hit two military targets overnight Tuesday on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, Syrian sources have reported.

The official SANA news agency said that two missiles hit “west of the town of Hader in the northern Quneitra countryside.” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that three missiles hit there “a military post of regime forces and Iranian militias,” causing a fire to break out. No casualties were reported.

Hader, a Druze village of some 5,000 residents, is about two miles from the Israeli border. It is located just outside the zone of the United Nations’ Disengagement Observer Force that monitors the ceasefire line between Syria and Israel. According to Israel, as far back as 2019, Lebanese Hezbollah operatives set up a terror network there under senior commander Ali Musa Daqduq to collect intelligence on possible Israeli targets.

Daqduq is on the American list of wanted terrorists, “responsible for numerous attacks against Coalition Forces in Iraq,” including one that killed five U.S. soldiers in 2007.

Syrian sources said that the other site that Israel hit was the office of Brig. Gen. Hussein Hamoush, who is in charge of the 90th Brigade of the Syrian army’s First Division.

Read  French president Macron accuses Israel of 'sowing barbarism,' commits to $108 million in aid to Lebanon

Israel believes that this brigade works together with Hezbollah. A leaflet circulating on social media that was allegedly dropped by the IDF shortly after the reported airstrike, warned the soldiers not to cooperate with the Iranian-backed terror organization.

“Your activities on behalf of Hezbollah are considered a high priority in the Syrian army,” it said. The leaflet explicitly named Hajj Jawad Hashem, “the Hezbollah commander in the Syrian Golan,” as the leader of the group that Division 90 is helping, by developing “monitoring capabilities and other actions, despite our previous warnings in this context.”

“Hezbollah is using your blood for its military goals without telling this to your faces,” it continued. “Be careful about the activities you carry out!!”

In May, the IDF had dropped similar messages in the Quneitra province while allegedly conducting a raid against local Hezbollah outposts. In that warning, it named Hamoush as being “among those who have sold their consciences and their homeland at the cheapest of prices… ignoring the general interest and your safety.”

The Tuesday airstrike comes just one week after a mysterious explosion occurred on an empty Iranian oil tanker at the Syrian port of Latakia that some believe to be an Israeli retaliation for recent attacks carried out by Iran in the Gulf of Oman on maritime vessels affiliated with Israel.