Israeli strike south of Damascus kills 'three members of pro-Iran groups'

Three pro-Iran fighters were killed on Friday in Israeli strikes south of the Syrian capital, a war monitor said, the second such attack this week.

Syrian state media reported damage from "Israeli" air strikes south of Damascus but did not mention any casualties.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor said "three members of pro-Iran groups, including an Iranian and an Iraqi national" were killed in "Israeli air strikes," adding the toll was provisional.

Strikes hit a site belonging to Lebanon's Hezbollah on a road leading to the Sayyida Zeinab district, the Observatory said, while a site previously vacated by pro-Iran groups on the road to the international airport was also targeted.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes targeting Syria but has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran, which backs President Bashar al-Assad's government, to expand its presence there.

"We do not comment on reports in the foreign media," the Israeli military said after the latest strikes.

Syrian state news agency SANA, citing an unidentified military source, said that at around 4:20 a.m., "the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting a number of points south of Damascus."

Air defense systems responded to the attack and downed some of the missiles, it said, reporting only material losses.

Israeli strikes in Syria earlier this week killed eight people, including pro-Iran fighters, the Observatory reported.

"Three Israeli missiles targeted a base belonging to Hezbollah and Iran's Revolutionary Guards in the Sayyida Zeinab district" on Monday, "killing at least eight people," Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said at the time.

A previous air strike in Sayyida Zeinab in late December also blamed on Israel, killed a senior Iranian general.

And on Jan. 20, a strike on Damascus's Mazzeh neighborhood targeting the Revolutionary Guards' Syria spy chief killed 13 people, the Observatory had said.

Since 2011, Syria has endured a bloody conflict that has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions more.

Iran says it only deploys military advisers in Syria at the invitation of Damascus.

Israel has for years carried out attacks on what it has described as Iran-linked targets in Syria, where Tehran's influence has grown since it began supporting President Bashar al-Assad in a civil war that started in 2011.

Since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian militant group Hamas from Gaza, Israel has escalated its strikes on Iranian-backed militia targets in Syria and has also struck Syrian army air defenses and some Syrian forces.

The White House has vowed to respond to the attack, which it has blamed on Iran-backed militants.