Israel fires missiles into southern Syria province

AMMAN, Feb 12, (Agencies): An Israeli drone fired four missiles near a demolished hospital and an army observation post in Syria’s southern Quneitra province near the border with Israel, but there had been only material damage, the Syrian army said on Monday.

An army source was quoted by state news agency SANA as saying that the “Israeli enemy” also hit several sites along border villages close to a 1974 demilitarized zone on the Golan frontier, which with Russian support, the Syrian army regained control from rebels last year.

Asked about the reported Quneitra strikes, an Israeli military spokeswoman declined comment.

State media earlier said the sites in Quneitra that were hit by Israel came from several tank artillery rounds.

Residents familiar with the area said that the sites targeted fall within the strategic area known as the “Triangle of Death” connecting the southern Damascus countryside with Deraa and Quneitra provinces.

The area is a bastion of Iranian-backed militias led by Lebanon’s Hezbollah group. The Israeli missile strike coincides with Tehran celebrating the 40th anniversary of the fall of the Shah and the Islamic revolution.

In many cases the deployment of the militias in the area relies heavily on recruitment of local youths, according to two Western intelligence sources.

They say Shi’ite Hezbollah group has consolidated its new front in southern Syria and entrenched Iran’s influence since the defeat of Sunni rebels who were once backed by Washington, Jordan and Gulf states.

Israel has mounted attacks in Syria as part of its effort to counter the influence carved out there by Iran, which has supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the war that erupted in 2011.

Iranian and Iran-backed groups including Lebanon’s Hezbollah that have deployed in Syria and now maintain a large presence in former rebel-held areas and territory regained from Islamic State militants in eastern Syria, according to regional military experts.

In January, Israeli warplanes carried out a strike on what they called an Iranian arms cache in Syria.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel would ramp up its fight against Iranian-aligned forces in Syria following the withdrawal of US troops from Syria.

A senior Israeli official said in September Israel had carried out more than 200 attacks against Iranian targets in Syria in the last two years.

With an election looming in April, Israel has been increasingly open about carrying out air strikes.

The US military said Tuesday it struck a mosque that had allegedly been used as an Islamic State control center, as American-allied Syrian forces battled the extremists in their last stronghold in eastern Syria amid reports of more civilian casualties.

The US-led coalition said warplanes struck the mosque in the small town of Baghouz on Monday in support of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. It said the airstrike occurred as IS was using the mosque to direct attacks and employ suicide car bombs against the SDF.

“This mosque lost its protected status when ISIS deliberately chose to use it as a command and control center,” said the coalition’s deputy commander, Maj Gen Christopher Ghika, using another acronym for the group.

Hundreds of mostly foreign IS fighters are believed to remain in Baghouz and nearby areas, where the SDF began its final push Saturday after months of fighting. IS has been fighting back with suicide car bombs, sniper fire and booby traps, and has been using civilians as human shields, slowing the US-backed fighters’ advance.

Syrian state media reported that about 70 people were killed or wounded in an airstrike by the US-led coalition on the edge of Baghouz. It said the airstrike hit a settlement where hundreds of people were taking shelter from the fighting.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said seven children and eight women were killed late Monday in an airstrike near Baghouz. It was not immediately clear if they were referring to the same event.

Col Sean Ryan, a coalition spokesman, said “we are aware of open source reports of alleged civilian casualties. We take all allegations of civilian casualties seriously, and understand there is a lot of misinformation as well.”

He added that “there are multiple actors conducting strikes within the area, so we are looking into it.”

Syrian government forces and their allies have in the past shelled the IS-held area. Iraqi forces have struck IS targets in Syria from across the border.

At least 20,000 civilians have fled the last sliver of IS-controlled territory in just the past few weeks. The numbers have overwhelmed Kurdish-run camps in northeastern Syria, where humanitarian conditions are already dire amid a cold winter and meager resources.