Israeli strikes on Syria’s Palmyra kills 36, state media say

At least 36 people have been killed and 50 others injured in Israeli air strikes on residential buildings and an industrial area in the central Syrian town of Palmyra, Syrian state media report.

The Sana news agency cited a military source as saying that Israeli jets attacked from the direction of the Jordanian border to the south at around 13:30 (10:30 GMT) and that the strikes causes significant material damage.

A UK-based monitoring group put the death toll at 41 and reported that the strikes hit a weapons depot and other locations in and around an area inhabited by families of Iran-backed militia fighters.

The Israeli military said it did not comment on foreign reports.

Israel has previously acknowledged carrying out hundreds of strikes in recent years on targets in Syria that it says are linked to Iran and allied armed groups such as Hezbollah.

The Israeli strikes in Syria have reportedly been more frequent since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, in response to cross-border attacks on northern Israel by Hezbollah and other groups in Lebanon and Syria.

Videos and photos posted on social media following Wednesday’s strikes appear to show three large columns of black smoke rising from the Palmyra area.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, cited its sources on the ground as saying that Israeli fighter jets struck three locations in the town.

Two were in the al-Jamiya neighbourhood, including a weapons depot near the industrial zone inhabited by families of Iran-backed fighters of Iraqi and other foreign nationalities, it said.

The third location was nearby and targeted a meeting attended by leaders of Iran-backed militias based in Palmyra and the surrounding desert as well as leaders of the Iraqi group Nujaba and Hezbollah, it added.

The SOHR reported that 41 people were killed, including 22 foreign nationals and seven Syrians, and seven civilians were among the injured.

Last Thursday, Israel confirmed that it had carried out several air strikes in the Syrian capital, Damascus, which Syrian state media said killed 15 people.

The Israeli military said it had struck “terrorist infrastructure sites and command centres” belonging to the armed group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.