Syria says several killed in alleged Israeli airstrike on Aleppo area
Unverified report from monitor claims 12 members of pro-Iran militias slain in attack on copper plant in town north of Aleppo
Several people were killed in alleged Israeli airstrikes outside of Aleppo, Syria’s defense ministry said early Monday.
According to reports, the attack targeted a copper plant in the town of Hayyan, north of Aleppo in northern Syria.
Video purporting to show the aftermath of the apparent strike showed large flames shooting out of a building.
“The Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the southeast of Aleppo, targeting some positions,” Syria’s defense ministry said in a statement carried by state-run media shortly after the attack at about 12:20 a.m.
“The aggression led to a number of martyrs and some material losses,” it added.
No specific toll was given.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition war monitor, claimed that attack killed at least 12 fighters belonging to pro-Iran militias.
The watchdog, which says it maintains a vast network of sources inside Syria, has been accused in the past of inflating regime losses.
According to the Observatory, Hayyan is “controlled by pro-Iranian groups composed of Syrians and foreigners.”
There was no comment on the strike from Israel, which has carried out hundreds of strikes inside Syria since the outbreak of that country’s civil war, mainly targeting attempts to transfer weapons to the Hezbollah terror group, an Iranian proxy, or to keep Iranian fighters themselves from gaining a foothold near Israel’s border.
Aleppo sits on the opposite side of Syria from Israel and is further than most previous attacks attributed to Israel, though Jerusalem is thought to have ordered strikes in the region before.
The last alleged Israeli strike in Syria occurred on May 29, in an attack that was blamed for the death of a girl in the coastal city of Baniyas. According to the observatory, three Hezbollah members nearby were also killed in a concurrent strike. It blamed shrapnel from the Syrian interception of an Israeli missile for the girl’s killing.
Alleged Israeli strikes have ramped up since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip began on October 7, when the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group launched a massive cross-border attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians.
Israel responded with a military offensive to destroy Hamas and free 252 hostages that terrorists kidnapped from Israel during the October 7 onslaught and took as hostages to Gaza.
Hezbollah has been exchanging near-daily fire with the Israeli army since the day after the Hamas attack. Hezbollah-led forces have attacked Israeli communities and military posts along the border on a near-daily basis, with the group saying it is doing so to support Gaza amid the war there.
