Death toll from Israeli attacks in northern Syria rises to 53

The death toll from the bombings launched by Israel last Friday increased to 53, including 38 soldiers from the Syrian government forces, the deadliest attack against the Arab country in the last three years, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported this Sunday. .

In addition to the Syrian soldiers, seven members of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and eight militiamen of Syrian nationality backed by Iran were killed in the attack that took place at midnight from Thursday to Friday, according to the NGO, whose headquarters are in the United Kingdom but which has a wide network of collaborators in the field.

The actions targeted a Shiite group missile warehouse near the Aleppo international airport, as well as other facilities used by the allied formation in Damascus.

An unnamed military source told the official Syrian news agency SANA that the attack took place at around 1:45 a.m. local time on Friday (22:45 GMT Thursday), when “the Israeli enemy launched an air attack from Athriya, southeast of Aleppo.” which caused the death of an unspecified number of “civilians and military personnel.”

However, the Observatory has not documented any civilian casualties in these attacks.

The Syrian Foreign Ministry described the attack as a “terrorist aggression” and called on the international community to “assume its responsibilities in the face of serious and repeated Israeli violations of the principles of international law.”

Although they have already taken place relatively frequently before, Israel has intensified its actions against Syria since the start of the Gaza war on October 7 and often targets pro-Iran militias present in the country as allies of the Syrian government.

So far this year, Israel has attacked Syrian territory 28 times, most of them by air, according to the Observatory