Ten people, including two Lebanese Hezbollah fighters and six civilians, were killed in Israeli attacks on the city of Homs in central Syria, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) said on Wednesday.
• Also read: Syria: At least three pro-Iranian fighters killed in Israeli strike
• Also read: The Israeli army says it has attacked military infrastructure in Syria
For its part, the Syrian Defense Ministry stated that “the Israeli enemy has carried out airstrikes (…) against several targets in the city of Homs and its surroundings (…), killing and injuring a number of civilians.”
According to the Observatory, the raids carried out on the night of Tuesday to Wednesday particularly targeted a building in a residential area of Homs that completely collapsed.
“Ten people, including six civilians and two pro-Iranian fighters, were killed in Israeli strikes against a building in the upscale residential district of Hamra in the city of Homs,” the OSDH said in a new report.
The UK-based Observatory, which has an extensive network of sources in Syria, had previously reported eight people killed.
A source close to Lebanon's Hezbollah, which fights alongside Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria, confirmed to AFP that two fighters from the pro-Iran Islamist formation had been killed.
Syrian state television broadcast footage showing rescuers searching through the rubble of what appeared to be a collapsed building and carrying a person on a stretcher.
Collapsed building
According to OSDH Director Rami Abdel Rahmane, the targeted three-story building collapsed completely.
Among those killed were three students who rented the building's basement and a woman who lived on the first floor, he added. The fighters rented the top floor. Two other unidentified bodies were also found, he said.
Since Syria's civil war began in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in this neighboring country, mainly targeting pro-Iranian forces, particularly the Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as the Syrian army.
These attacks have increased since the war in Gaza began on October 7 between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, an ally of Hezbollah.
Since December, several attacks have targeted Iranian military advisers who support the Syrian regime.
Israel has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran, which supports President Bashar al-Assad's government, to expand its presence in Syria.
On Saturday, the Israeli army claimed to have struck more than 50 Hezbollah-linked targets in Syria on the ground and from the air since October.
Last week, the United States also carried out strikes against Iranian-backed groups in Syria and Iraq, killing several dozen people, in retaliation for a deadly attack on its troops in Jordan.