Israeli air strikes in eastern Syria have killed 57 regime forces and Iranian allied fighters in the deadliest attacks since the conflict began, a war monitoring group said on Wednesday.
The nightly attacks on arms depots and military positions killed at least 14 Syrian regime forces, 16 Iraqi militia fighters and 11 Afghan members of the pro-Iran Fatimid Brigade, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The nationality of the remaining 16 people who lost their lives in the 18 strikes was not immediately clear.
“This is the highest number of deaths in Israeli attacks in Syria,” said the head of the Syrian Observatory, Rami Abdul Rahman.
The official Syrian news agency Sana said that “the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial attack on the city of Deir Ezzor and the Albu Kamal region”, adding that “the results of the aggression are being verified”.
An Israeli army spokesman declined to comment.
Days before the attacks, the Fatimid Brigade transported a shipment of weapons manufactured by Iran from neighboring Iraq to eastern Syria, said the UK-based Observatory, which has a network of local sources. They were stored in the target region overnight, he added.
It has been less than a week since the last wave of Israeli attacks in Syria. On Thursday, Israel targeted positions in the south and the southern periphery of Damascus, killing three pro-Iranian fighters.
Israel carries out routine attacks in Syria, mainly against targets linked to Iran, in what it says is an attempt to prevent its archenemy from consolidating a foothold on its northern border.
Observers have warned that Donald Trump and Israel may raise the stakes against Iran and its regional allies in the last days of the United States president’s term.
The Trump administration, which will replace Joe Biden on Jan. 20, has given unprecedented U.S. support to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“In the last days of the Trump administration, Netanyahu is trying to do as much damage as possible to the IRGC effort in Syria before Biden takes office,” said Nicholas Heras, of the War Study Institute, referring to the Iranian Revolutionary Islamic Guard Corps .
Israel has carried out hundreds of air and missile strikes against Syria since the start of the civil war in 2011, targeting Hezbollah’s Iranian and Lebanese forces, as well as Syrian government troops.
Israel rarely recognizes individual attacks, but it did so in response to what it describes as aggression within Israeli territory.
It hit about 50 targets in Syria in 2020, according to an annual report released by its military.
The latest attacks came hours after separate attacks near the Iraqi border killed at least 12 Iranian-backed militiamen on Tuesday. The Observatory said it was unable to identify the warplanes responsible for previous attacks.
The war in Syria has killed more than 387,000 people and displaced millions more since it broke out after the brutal crackdown on anti-government protests.