Israeli airstrike targets Hezbollah weapons facility in Syria

JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said it conducted an airstrike on a Hezbollah weapons storage facility in Syria on Tuesday.

The military said the strike targeted the facility run by Hezbollah’s munitions unit in the Syrian town of al-Qusayr, near the border with Lebanon. It said Hezbollah had recently expanded its facilities in the area to step up weapons smuggling into Lebanon from Syria.

The strikes hit an industrial zone in al-Qusayr, according to Syrian state media and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a conflict-monitoring group. There were no immediate reports of casualties.

On Monday, an Israeli airstrike struck near the Sayida Zeinab suburb, south of Damascus, an area where Iran-backed groups are active. The Israeli military claimed responsibility for killing the head of Hezbollah’s military branch in Syria, whom it identified as Mahmoud Mohammed Shaheen.

For the past month, Israel has been carrying out an escalated bombardment campaign in Lebanon, aiming to cripple the Hezbollah terrorist group, which is allied with Syria and Iran. Israel has also launched ground incursions just across the Israel-Lebanon border, saying it aims to put an end to a year of Hezbollah rocket fire into northern Israel.

Iran’s foreign minister on Tuesday reiterated that his country does not seek an escalation in the Middle East but reserved the right to defend itself against Israel’s attack with a “measured and calculative” response.

Iranian officials are increasingly threatening to launch yet another strike against Israel after its Oct. 26 attack on the Islamic Republic that targeted military bases and other locations and killed at least five people.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, speaking at a news conference during a visit to Pakistan, said that “unlike the Israeli regime, the Islamic Republic of Iran does not seek escalation.”

Araghchi met with Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, who called for an urgent cease-fire to de-escalate tensions in the region.

An Israeli airstrike in northern Gaza late Monday killed at least 20 people. The Israeli military said it targeted a weapons storage facility from which a terrorist had operated, and that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”

The military has ordered the complete evacuation of Beit Lahiya, the nearby town of Beit Hanoun and the urban Jabaliya refugee camp.

The army has returned to several areas of Gaza multiple times after previous operations, as Hamas continues to carry out hit-and-run attacks on troops and fire occasional rockets into Israel.

The Israeli military says it only targets terrorists and accuses them of hiding among civilians.

The war began when Hamas-led terrorists attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, taking another 250 people hostage. Around 100 captives are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its toll.