Israel strikes Syrian targets in Golan after assassinating Hezbollah weapons man

Sources say that Hassan Nasrallah's former bodyguard Yasser Kranbish was targeted by Israel for his role in smuggling weapons from Syria

Israeli police and soldiers block a road as smoke rises in the background after two people were critically wounded by a rocket in the Golan Heights. EPA

Live updates: Follow the latest news on Israel-Gaza

Israel has stepped up its strikes against Hezbollah and other Iran-linked targets in Syria and Lebanon as new details emerged about one of the group's key operatives who was killed in the attacks.

On Wednesday, Israel said it had struck Syrian military targets in the Golan Heights, a rocky plateau on the border with Syria. Most of the Golan Heights has been occupied by Israel since 1967, but a 1974 agreement established a small UN-monitored buffer zone between the Israeli-occupied territory and Syria.

The Israeli army did not give exact details of where the strikes took place, but Israeli media reports suggest they hit targets in Quneitra, within the buffer zone.

The army said tanks and artillery targeted Syrian military targets “which exceeded the 1974 separation of forces agreement between Israel and Syria in the buffer zone.”

“It considers the Syrian army responsible for everything that happens in its territory and will not allow attempts to violate the separation agreement,” the army added.

There was no immediate comment from Syrian state media.

Israel has struck Hezbollah and Iran-backed targets in Syria and Lebanon since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October, when Hezbollah opened a second front on Israel's northern border in support of its ally Hamas in Gaza.

Israel also said it bombed Hezbollah targets within southern Lebanon overnight on Tuesday, targeting aerial defences in Janta and Baraachit and a weapons storage facility in Kfarkela.

The latest strikes come a day after two Israeli civilians were killed in a Hezbollah attack on the Israeli-occupied part of the Golan Heights.

The group said it hit the Nafah military base, home to the 210 Golani Brigade, with “dozens of rockets” on Tuesday evening, hitting a car in the area.

Hezbollah said the attack was retaliation for the killing of Hezbollah militants in an Israeli drone strike on the Beirut-Damascus highway in Syria.

Smoke billows from the site of an Israeli airstrike on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese village of Habbariyeh, near the border with Israel. AFP

Israel targets Hezbollah weapons man

The Israeli strikes on Syria appear to be targeting Hezbollah's weapons network.

One of the Hezbollah members killed in the drone strike near Damascus was Yasser Kranbish, a former bodyguard of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who sources said had since become a central operative in the Lebanese group's operations to secure advanced weaponry for its arsenal.

Before the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel, Mr Kranbish was frequently seen next to Mr Nasrallah during the leader's regular public appearances in Lebanon.

But he disappeared from the public eye after the war, and in the almost two decades since, Mr Kranbish had apparently made a transformation from bodyguard to weapons operative.

Waiel Olwan, senior researcher at the Jusoor Centre for Studies in Istanbul, said Mr Kranbish's brief covered multiple aspects of Hezbollah's missile and aerial capabilities, including increased attacks by the group from southern Syria on Israeli targets in the Golan Heights.

He played a main role in Hezbollah's "airborne power" in Syria and "was therefore killed", Mr Olwan said.

Mohanad Hage Ali, deputy director for research at the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Centre, said Mr Kranbish was responsible for weapon transportation between Syria and Lebanon.

The assassination shows that Israel "can damage the supply line," he said, adding that it could have been been also result of "opportunity".

Mr Hage Ali pointed out that Israel has been taking every occasion to target Hezbollah officials, whenever it had the intelligence to do so.

Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, right, gives a speech while his bodyguard Yasser Kranbish watches on. An Israeli strike killed Mr Kranbish this week. AP

Israel has repeatedly targeted Hezbollah's missile and electronic warfare systems, and their handlers, in its strikes on the group since a limited war broke out between the two sides in parallel to the Gaza war.

Hours before Yasser Kranbish was assassinated, a suspected Iranian site near the Syrian port city of Baniyas, thought to house air defences and electronics equipment, was struck by Israeli warplanes.

"It is not a coincidence that Kranbish was killed in tandem with the Baniyas attack," said a member of the Syrian opposition to President Bashar Al Assad, who tracks movements by Iran and its proxies in the country.

Mr Kranbish, he told The National, was seen as a key player in Hezbollah's build-up of missile capability, and in particular air defence systems.

"Israel has been focusing on taking out the liaison figures in involved in the weapons transfer," he said. "Kranbish was an important operative in this regard."

Former bodyguard

Outside Hezbollah circles, little had been known of what happened to Mr Kranbish since his bodyguard days, until the group's loyalists published his death notice on social media.

They said he was killed in a drone attack on the Damascus-Beirut road, just before the Lebanese border. Photos and video footage purportedly showed the car he was in on fire, having apparently hit a concrete barrier in the middle of the road.

His body was transferred to the Sayda Zeinab shrine in south Damascus before burial, due to take place in Beirut's southern suburb on Wednesday evening.

When he was Mr Nasrallah's bodyguard, he was a clean shaven, slightly stocky figure, often in a grey or black suit. He remained expressionless and did not speak while keeping journalists and others away from Mr Nasrallah at public events.

The picture of him in his death notice, which said he was born in 1970, showed him having greyed considerably.

He had grown a beard and wore military fatigues.

His service with Mr Nasrallah appeared to have qualified him for the weapons role that ultimately meant he was targeted.

"Having been Nasrallah's bodyguard means that he was also regarded as ideologically pure and could be trusted with delicate missions," the Syrian opposition source said.

Robert Tollast reported from Abu Dhabi and Nada Maucourant Atallah reported from Beirut