Israeli strikes in Syria target Hezbollah-linked weapons production and supply routes

Overnight strikes were carried out alongside attacks across the border in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, a Hezbollah stronghold

The site of an overnight Israeli airstrike on the Gouraud Barracks neighbourhood in Lebanon's eastern city of Baalbek on Tuesday. AFP

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Israeli aircraft struck areas in Syria bordering Hezbollah strongholds in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley on Tuesday, in a campaign to cut off supplies of advanced weapons to the Iran-backed militant group, regional sources monitoring its activities said.

Israel has intensified raids on Hezbollah areas in the Bekaa Valley, continuing an all-out assault on the group that began in late September, after a year of limited exchanges across Lebanon's southern border.

Members of Telegram groups run by loyalists of President Bashar Al Assad said the Jusiya border crossing and the nearby Syrian city of Qusayr, both in the central governorate of Homs, came under attack. The attack on Qusayr, carried out by a drone, targeted a car, apparently killing two unidentified occupants.

Syrian state media did not report the attacks. A resident of Homs said the attack on Jusiya targeted army fortifications and that anti-aircraft guns were heard in the area. “Israeli drones are buzzing 24 hours over the border. One hears them when walking in the streets,” he said.

Opposition media also reported attacks on a military airport in the southern Suweida governorate and on a hilltop military base in the adjacent Deraa governorate. Both are regarded as radar and reconnaissance sites. There was no official confirmation of the two attacks.

A Syrian opposition figure, who works on military issues, said that the Jusiya-Qusayr area has increasingly served as a supply line since Hezbollah captured Qusayr from rebels fighting the Syrian army and its pro-Iranian militia allies in 2013.

Precision missiles and drones, developed and assembled at two Iranian-run sites in the neighbouring Hama governorate, Masyaf and Jabal Taqsis, have been flowing across the border to Hezbollah, he said.

“The Homs-Bekaa valley axis is critical for Hezbollah,” he said. Other Iranian weapons reach Hezbollah through the area after passing through a corridor from the Iraqi border to the city of Palmyra, in the desert fringes of Homs governorate.

An image released by Syrian Arab News Agency on September 9, 2024, shows a large fire burning overnight in the Masyaf area in Hama province following Israeli air strikes. SANA / AFP

In September, Israeli media reported that its special forces had carried out a rare ground raid in Masyaf, overrunning a key weapons development site. Israel has struck the complex in the past from the air, but parts of the facility buried deep underground were nearly impervious to strikes.

Jusiya, one of about six crossings between Syria and Lebanon, has been out of commission since last week, when Israeli planes hit the outpost and reportedly killed three members of Syrian intelligence.

Israel's escalated air raids in Lebanon are believed to have destroyed large quantities of Hezbollah's arsenal, which was estimated to contain anywhere between 100,000 and 200,000 rockets and missiles.

Many parts of the Bekaa, strategically situated between Syria and Mount Lebanon, constitute a Hezbollah fiefdom. Narcotics are produced in the valley by Hezbollah-linked cartels and are smuggled through Syria to other Arab states.

The aftermath of an Israeli airstrike on the village of Shmistar in Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley on October 28, 2024. AFP

A Lebanese local government official said on Tuesday that the Israeli strikes had killed 67 people in the previous 24 hours, mainly in the northern Baalbek-Hermel governorate that borders Syria.

Hezbollah started launching attacks into northern Israel a day after Hamas, another militant group supported by Iran, entered southern Israel from Gaza and killed about 1,200 people in attacks on Israeli bases and population centres on October 7 last year, triggering the current Gaza war.

Since September, Israeli attacks on Syria have increasingly targeted Syrian security sites, as opposed to Hezbollah and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. This has raised pressure on the ruling elite in Damascus, who have depended on pro-Iranian auxiliaries, as well as Russia's military intervention, for survival throughout the Syrian civil war.

Arab and western intelligence sources say that Israel has abandoned past restraint against targeting the top echelons of the Syrian military. Brig Gen Maher Al Assad, the president's brother and the second-most powerful man in Syria, could have become a target, because of his close ties with Iran, they said. He controls the Fourth Mechanised Division, the best equipped unit in the army, which is in charge of border areas.