Israeli strike on Syrian city of Quneitra kills member of security forces

The attack comes a day after an Israeli missile strike on a building in Damascus killed ten people

The aftermath of a deadly Israeli air strike on a residential building in Mazzeh, Damascus. AFP

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An Israeli air strike on the southern Syrian city of Quneitra killed a member of the country's security forces on Wednesday, state media said, a day after another attack on Damascus left 10 people dead.

Quneitra is in the Golan Heights, near a 1974 armistice line separating Israel and Syria, where Iran-backed militias have established a presence in the last six years.

The security forces member was killed after "Israeli aggression targeted the eastern entrance" of the city, the official Syrian news agency Sana said, citing an official in Quneitra. Government media reported that the attack occurred at a roundabout.

Syrian media opposed to President Bashar Al Assad said an Israeli drone carried out the attack and targeted a security compound at the roundabout.

Lebanon-based Hezbollah and other militia groups supported by Iran have been operating in the region since 2018, according to Arab security officials, when Russian intervention restored the area under the control of central Syrian authorities after rebels had captured parts.

Israel has been mounting a campaign to destroy Hezbollah's command structure in both Lebanon and Syria. On September 8, Israeli special forces reportedly carried out a rare ground raid in the central Syrian area of Masyaf, about 240km north of the Israeli border, storming a weapons development site overseen by Iran.

Israel is seeking to weaken Iran's ability to open another front in Syria, from where it could inflict damage on Israeli troops stationed in the occupied Golan Heights, according to members of Syria's political opposition who specialise in reconnaissance.

A Syrian opposition source said this week that despite Israel's recent military successes, it is still dangerously exposed to a network of militias that Iran and Hezbollah have built adjacent to Israeli positions in the Golan Heights, across the armistice line.

"I would not be surprised if Israel's next incursion will be across the Golan, to neutralise the Hezbollah proxies and bases there," the source said, adding that such an operation would also be designed to prevent Iran from moving thousands of Iraqi militia fighters to the Golan from Damascus and eastern Syria.

The attack on Quneitra came after an Israeli strike on a building in Damascus on Tuesday night killed ten people.

Israeli raids in Syria have intensified in pursuit of key supply lines serving Hezbollah and its personnel operating in the country. The campaign has eliminated a significant part of the militant group's command structure in the past few weeks.

Syrian state media quoted a military official as saying on Tuesday that seven "civilian martyrs" were killed in the night attack on the Mazzeh district of Damascus. Other Syrian media outlets have since said the death toll has risen to ten.

Israeli planes launched three missiles at the building, the official said. Damascus residents said on Telegram groups that a Syrian doctor and a Yemeni university professor were among the dead.

An Israeli strike on a building in the same district last week reportedly killed Hassan Jaafar Al Qasir, a relative of late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who was assassinated by Israel in Beirut two weeks ago. Al Qasir was in charge of Hezbollah's financing and stealth accounts, according to Israeli and Arab media.

A number of commanders in Hezbollah, Palestinian militant groups and Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been killed in Syria in the last year, particularly in Mazzeh.

Figures linked to Tehran and its regional proxies have been buying or leasing property in the area since Iran started carving a zone of control in Syria at the onset of the Syrian civil war in 2011. They have also been buying land near urban concentrations on the edge of Damascus.