Israel strikes kill Hezbollah commander and Syrian colonel

Israel assassinated a Syrian colonel in Damascus and a senior Hezbollah commander in Lebanon in a series of pinpointed strikes amid the largest attacks on neighbouring countries since the start of the war in Gaza.

An apparent explosive device planted in the car of a colonel of the Syrian army went off on Friday morning in the suburbs of the Syrian capital Damascus, the UK-based rights group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The unnamed colonel has been described as a trained engineer with expertise in electrical charges. He was also responsible for coordinating with Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias.

Separately, state media in Syria accused Israel of launching airstrikes near the airport of Aleppo in the north, citing an unspecified number of casualties.

At least 36 Syrian soldiers and six Hezbollah fighters have been killed when a weapons depot in the area was targeted, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In Lebanon on Friday, the IDF claimed responsibility for an early morning car bomb that struck and killed a senior Hezbollah commander as drone footage showed the car moving on the road before it was hit.

Ali Abed Akhsan Naim, deputy commander of Hezbollah’s rocket and missile unit, was killed in the village of Bazouriye in the south. His car was seen in a video posted on social media sitting on the side of the road, engulfed in flames.

The Israeli army described him as a “significant source of knowledge in the terrorist organisation and leader in the field of rockets” who played a crucial role in “conducting and planning attacks against Israeli civilians”.

Hezbollah later confirmed Mr Naim’s death in a message of condolences posted online.

The Iranian-backed group responded later on Friday by firing a barrage of rockets on border areas in northern Israel. No casualties were immediately reported.

Swathes of northern Israel and southern Lebanon have been evacuated since the start of the war in Gaza last year as Hezbollah and Israel engaged in near-daily exchange of fire that stopped short of full-scale hostilities.

In recent months, Israel has been ratcheting pressure on Hezbollah by targeting its assets deep into Lebanon and as far as Syria. Hezbollah has retaliated by hitting further out into Israel.

Leaders of Hamas that unleashed an unprecedented massacre on Israeli soil on October 7 last year have reportedly been disappointed with Iran’s unwillingness to get dragged into an all-out war with Israel right after the Hamas border attack.

Earlier this week, Ismail Haniyeh, leader of Hamas’s political wing, paid a rare visit to Tehran where he submitted a “field report” on the war in Gaza, the Iranian news agency Mahar reported on Friday.

‘Al-Shifa made base’

In Gaza, Israeli troops continued to fight holed-up Hamas fighters around Gaza City’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, where the terrorist group appears to have regrouped in recent weeks.

One of the skirmishes killed Raed Thabet, identified by the IDF as a senior Hamas official in charge of supplies and manpower.

Earlier this week, Israel released a testimony video of two suspected Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters who described how the terrorist groups were able to come back to Al-Shifa and make it their base, months after the Israeli troops gained control of the area.