ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At least four people were killed on Wednesday when an unidentified strike targeted a vehicle near a Syrian regime checkpoint on the Damascus-Beirut road, a war monitor reported. Israel has previously carried out strikes in the area. “Four people were killed when an unknown strike, believed to be Israeli, targeted a car on the Damascus-Beirut road on Wednesday morning,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on regime-controlled areas of Syria throughout its nearly 13-year civil war, often claiming to target pro-Iran militias which support the Syrian army, such as Hezbollah. While Israel rarely comments on strikes attributed to it in Syria, Israel has repeatedly warned that it would not tolerate its arch-rival Iran gaining a foothold there. Israel has also previously struck the Damascus-Beirut road, killing at least three people in two separate attacks earlier this month and in July. The latter killed Yasser Qarnabash, a personal bodyguard of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. The strikes have increased since October 7, when Palestinian Hamas militants launched an unprecedented, large-scale attack on Israeli territory that has prompted significant retaliation. On Friday, an Israeli strike in central Syria’s Homs and Hama provinces killed three Iran-backed militants. Israel has carried out 60 strikes on Syrian territory since the beginning of the year, killing 181 combatants and injuring 113 more, according to data from the Observatory.
