Israel Strikes in Surprise Location, Syria Claims

Israel on Wednesday conducted yet another airstrike in Syria, the fourth in less than three weeks, the Syrian state news agency reported. According to Damascus officials, Israeli fighter jets raided a relatively untargeted area near the country’s eastern border with Iraq. Syrian opposition forces reported that at least 16 people were killed in the attack, most of them Iranian-backed troops stationed in the region, alongside Syrian soldiers loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights later on Wednesday put the number of  those killed at 57. Jerusalem has not commented on the incident. The relatively high death toll and the location of Wednesday’s strike distinguish it from the previous three raids attributed to Israel in recent days, which have targeted mostly fighters of the Lebanese-based Hizbullah group, and were carried out near the western Syrian capital. Israel’s air force has reportedly conducted thousands of missions in Syria in recent years, as the war-torn country, ripped apart by a decade-long civil war, has become a hotbed for hostile Iranian activities Israel deems a national security threat.