Syria says Israeli airstrikes over Homs have killed and wounded civilians

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Israeli airstrikes over Syria’s central city of Homs and nearby areas killed and wounded civilians, the Syrian military said Wednesday without giving details.

There was no immediate comment from Israel. The strikes come as tensions across the Middle East grow with the Israel-Hamas war and a drone attack last month that killed three U.S. troops in northeastern Jordan near the Syrian border.

Syrian state news agency SANA quoted an unidentified military official as saying the strikes late Tuesday damaged private and public property. The pro-government Sham FM radio station said the areas struck included the affluent al-Malaab neighborhood and Hamra Street.

At least six civilians were killed including a woman and a child, along with two militants from the Lebanese Hezbollah group and two people who could not immediately be identified, according to the Britain-based pro-opposition war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Humanitarian Rights.

The observatory said the casualties were all in a building on Hamra Street. It said at least nine explosions were heard in Homs and its outskirts, where Hezbollah is reportedly present.

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years.

Israel rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, but it has said it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups such as Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces. It has also targeted members of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, including a high-ranking general in December.

Chehayeb reported from Beirut.