Civilians among at least 18 killed in Israeli airstrikes on Syria

At least 18 people have been killed in an Israeli airstrike on Syria’s Hama province, Syria's health minister has said.

It was the deadliest Israeli attack reported by Syrian authorities since the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus was hit in April, which sparked a barrage of drones and missiles from Tehran in response.

Speaking to reporters, Syrian health minister Hassan al-Ghabbash described the strikes as a "brutal and barbaric aggression". He said the death toll had risen to 18 with nearly 40 wounded.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said 25 were killed, including at least five civilians, while the others included Syrian army soldiers and members of Hezbollah and other Iran-linked armed groups. It said 13 explosions rang out in the zone housing scientific research centres in Masyaf “where pro-Iranian groups and weapons development experts are present”.

Syrian air defences “confronted an aggression that targeted several points in the central region”, the SANA news agency reported.

The attack reportedly damaged a highway in Hama province and sparked blazes that firefighting teams were still battling to control early Monday.

Fayssal Haidard, director of the Masyaf National Hospital, said that “Israeli aggression” had caused the deaths of five civilians.

Israel has for years been targeting what it has described as Iranian or Iran-backed targets in Syria, where Iranian forces and Tehran-backed militias deployed widely to support President Bashar al-Assad during Syria’s civil war.

It has stepped up the campaign since the 7 October attack by Hamas inside Israel which triggered the war in Gaza. In that attack, Hamas killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 people. Around 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, about a third of whom are believed to be dead.

The nearly 11-month-long Israeli offensive in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 people according to Palestinian health officials – and has displaced about 90 per cent of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, often multiple times.

The increase in strikes includes the 1 April attack that hit the Iranian embassy compound and killed senior Iranian commanders including one of Tehran’s top generals.

Israel has vowed to stop Iranian entrenchment in Syria, particularly since Syria is a key route for Iran to send weapons to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. Both Hamas and Hezbollah are backed by Iran.

Hezbollah has been clashing with Israeli forces along the Lebanon-Israel border for the duration of the war in Gaza, trading near-daily rocket fire and threats of escalation.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military about the latest strikes in Syria. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes inside Syria in recent years, but has rarely acknowledged or discussed the operations.

“The enemy launched an air aggression from the direction of northwest Lebanon, targeting a number of military sites in the central region” shortly before 11.20pm local time, the Syrian news agency quoted a military source as saying. “Our air defence shot down some missiles.”

Two regional intelligence sources said a major military research centre for chemical arms production located near Misyaf was hit several times.

However, a senior regional military source close to Damascus and Tehran denied the accounts that it was a chemical weapons facility, saying that the target was a well-known Syrian research facility.

Syrian state media also reported that the strikes caused material damage to the Masyaf-Wadi al-Uyun highway and sparked a fire in Hair Abbas area.

The Syrian foreign ministry condemned the attack as an act of blatant aggression. In addition to the 16 fatalities and 36 wounded, it had caused “material damage to some residential areas”, it said in a statement.

Tehran strongly condemned the “criminal attack” in Syria, Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said.

“We do not confirm what was reported by media outlets linked to [Israel] about an attack on an Iranian centre or a centre under Iran’s protection,” he told reporters.

Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report