Reports: Israel Conducts Military Strike in Southern Syria

An Israeli drone strike in southern Syria killed three people on Wednesday, while another Israeli airstrike targeting an outpost for a pro-Syrian Palestinian terror group in eastern Lebanon wounded six members of the group, according to the Syrian government and an activist group.

There was no immediate comment from Israel, which has rarely confirmed airstrikes inside Syrian territory in the course of that country’s civil war, now in its fifth year.

In a statement aired on Syrian state-run media, the Syrian government said that a pilotless Israeli plane struck a civilian car near the predominantly Druze village of Hader, killing the three villagers.

Al-Manar, a media outlet of Lebanon’s Hizbullah terrorist group, said the strike targeted a car carrying members of the Syrian National Defense Committees, a pro-Assad militia, near Hader. The village is surrounded by Syrian opposition-controlled territory.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claimed the attack killed three NDC and two Hizbullah fighters.

Hizbullah has sent thousands of fighters to help Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces in the civil war.

In January, Hizbullah accused Israel of carrying out an airstrike on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, which killed several Hizbullah members and a prominent Iranian general. Among the Hizbullah members was Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of Imad Mughniyeh, a top Hizbullah operative assassinated in 2008 in Damascus.

In neighboring Lebanon, meanwhile, an explosion occurred at a base belonging to a hard-line pro-Assad Palestinian terrorist group called the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, killing a Palestinian fighter and wounding six, the state-run National News Agency said.

The news agency said the blast Wednesday in the village of Qusaya, only a few miles from the border with Syria, also destroyed two vehicles belonging to the terrorist group. The Syrian government said the attack wounded six members of the group.

The PFLP-GC has several bases in Lebanon and was targeted in the past by Israel’s air force.

This article appeared in print on page 6 of the July 30th, 2015 edition of Hamodia.