Israel’s continued airstrikes in Syria have escalated, with recent attacks targeting vehicles carrying humanitarian aid in Homs and a car factory, causing significant destruction and injuries. These strikes follow the heightened tensions triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, with Israel increasing its military operations in Syria against Iran-linked targets. At the same time, Iranian officials, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, reaffirmed their unwavering support for Syria and the resistance movement to counter Israel’s occupation and aggression. The ongoing conflict has forced a large number of Syrian refugees to flee Lebanon, while Syria remains cautious, choosing not to engage directly in the escalating Israel-Hezbollah conflict despite continued Israeli strikes on Syrian territory.
Israeli airstrike targets three cars in Syria’s Homs, state news agency says
An Israeli airstrike targeted three cars carrying medical and relief materials in the industrial city in Syria’s Homs, the Syrian state news agency reported on Sunday, adding that material damage was reported, Reuters reported.
The state news agency quoted the head of the industrial city in a town of Homs as saying that no factories were targeted inside the city and that the sound of the blast was a result of the Israeli strike.
Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years but has ramped up such raids since last year’s Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian group Hamas on Israeli territory that sparked the Gaza war.
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Iran says will continue supporting Syria, resistance to counter Israel
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi says Tehran will continue to provide full support for Syria and the resistance front to counter Israel’s occupation and warmongering in the region, Iranian Press TV reported.
Araghchi made the remarks in a meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Saturday in Syria where he is on the second leg of his regional tour after paying an “important” visit to Lebanon a day earlier.
“This [Iran’s] principled stance is in line with protecting regional peace and stability and supporting national security of the countries in the region,” he said.
The Syrian president, for his part, hailed Iran’s strong stance in support of the oppressed Palestinian people and the right to self-defence as well as resistance against the Zionist enemy’s occupation and aggression.
Assad said the international community must make all-out efforts to end Israel’s criminal adventurism.
Israeli strike hits car factory in Syria
An Israeli strike in Syria on Sunday targeted trucks transporting aid for Lebanese people, wounding three aid workers, a war monitor said, the latest such attack on the country.
Israeli aircraft launched “airstrikes with three missiles targeting… three trucks loaded with food and medical supplies inside an Iranian car factory… in southern Homs,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, quoted by Al-Arabiya.
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The attack destroyed the trucks and wounded three aid workers, said the British-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria.
“The trucks crossed over from Iraq to provide humanitarian aid to Lebanese people” affected by intensifying Israeli strikes, it added.
On Friday, Lebanon said an Israeli air strike on the Syrian border cut off the main international road linking the two countries.
Syrian refugees flee Lebanon for Kurdish and Turkish-controlled parts of northern Syria
Israel’s war on Lebanon has forced over 200,000 Syrian refugees to flee to different areas in northern Syria outside the control of Bashar al-Assad’s government, MEE reported.
The Lebanese government has estimated that some 310,000 people, most of them Syrians, have fled the country since Israel began its onslaught targeting Beirut and southern Lebanon last week.
Footage circulated widely on social media last week showed hundreds of families, including women and children, stranded at a border checkpoint between rebel-held and Syrian government territories. According to activists, humanitarian organisations and displaced families, many of these people had been forced from the same area years ago during Syria’s deadly conflict, which erupted after the 2011 uprising.
“These people are mostly from this region,” one activist told Middle East Eye. “They fled when their homes became a battlefield, and now they are returning only to face another crisis.”
The number of people who have fled Lebanon so far already surpassed the 250,000 who escaped the country during the 33 days of conflict with Israel in 2006.
Over 16,500 of those displaced have sought refuge in Kurdish-majority areas in the northeast, while another 2,000 have fled to regions controlled by Turkish-backed rebel forces, according to Shafak, a humanitarian organisation based in northern Syria.
Shafak interviewed approximately 47 returnees and said they were mostly Syrians from rural Idlib (Sarmin, Bennish, Jabal al-Zawiya), northern rural Aleppo and rural Hama.
Some returnees hailed from Assad-controlled areas, such as Aleppo and Damascus, but opted to head to northwestern Syria, believing it to be safer, Shafak said in a briefing.
Why has Syria stayed out of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict?
At a time of escalating conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah, analysts say the Syrian government has been noticeably quiet to avoid getting drawn into the conflict, VoA reported.
The Syrian regime is one of Iran’s closest allies and also has strong ties with Tehran’s proxies in the region, including the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group.
Despite periodic strikes launched by Israel against targets inside Syria — including two this week alone on Damascus — the Syrian government has only condemned the strikes and taken no action.
Seth Frantzman, an adjunct fellow at The Foundation of Defense of Democracies, said the Syrian government’s reticence to join Iran’s threats against Israel “likely stems from the regime’s sense that it has nothing to gain by escalation and much to lose.”
He told VOA that with Syria’s long-running civil war remaining unsettled, Damascus is still trying to find a way to return its forces to Turkish-occupied areas in northern Syria and to get the U.S. to leave eastern Syria and stop backing the rebel Syrian Democratic Forces.
“Therefore, the regime has enough problems on its hands,” he said.
Experts say the Golan Heights is one region that could be the target of Iranian-backed groups that have presence in Syria. In late July, a village in the Israeli-controlled part of the Golan was targeted by a rocket attack, killing at least 12 people, mostly children. Israel and the United States blamed Hezbollah for the attack.
Frantzman said Hezbollah and Iranian-backed militias may want to threaten Israel from the Syrian part of the Golan, but the Assad government “would likely pretend it has plausible deniability in such an escalation,” adding “the regime knows Israel will hold it responsible for any direct support for attacks, or even semblance of backing attacks.”
For decades, Syria has shown it prefers the status quo with Israel, he said.
“It has been risk-averse and although it poses as a part of the ‘resistance’ against Israel, it has accepted it cannot defeat Israel since the 1970s,” Frantzman said.
Syria remains Hezbollah weapons route
Israeli officials have said that Iran continues to use Syria to traffic weapons to Hezbollah. Even this, experts say, represents a risk for the Syrian regime at this point of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
“Since Hezbollah has withdrawn most of its fighters from Syria to fight in Lebanon, it still needs someone to transport Iranian weapons, and that would be Maher, Assad’s brother who heads the Fourth Division of the Syrian army,” Rahal said.
Several Arab media outlets reported that among last week’s Israeli strikes on Syria was one that hit Maher al-Assad’s residence near Damascus.
“The Israel message to the Assads was clear: Do not deliver weapons to Hezbollah,” Rahal said. “So it seems that under such Israeli threats, the Assad regime has been forced to distance itself from Iran in the context of this conflict.”
Israel’s latest attack on Beirut cuts off crossing between Lebanon, Syria
Israel’s latest attack on Lebanon’s capital city of Beirut has cut off a key crossing with Syria, as tens of thousands of people look to escape the growing conflict between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the overnight strike early Friday was the military’s effort “to prevent weapons from being smuggled into Lebanese territories, IAF fighter jets, directed by the IDF Intelligence Directorate, struck an underground tunnel crossing from the Lebanese border into Syria.”
The IDF noted that the targeted tunnel allowed the Lebanese militant group to transfer and store “large quantities of weapons underground.” Israel has also claimed to have killed 100 Hezbollah fighters in the last 24 hours, The Associated Press reported.
The attack alongside the Lebanon-Syria border forced the closure of a road near the Masnaa Border Crossing, according to the AP.
The Israeli military also said Friday that they killed the commander of the 4400 Unit, Mohammed Jaafar Katzir.
The attack, which was condemned by Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, comes as Israel began limited ground incursions into Lebanon on earlier this week. The operation came after heavy airstrikes in the region.
Those strikes, which have killed more than 1,000 people, including Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and a bevy of other top officials, and recent deadly pager and hand-held radio attacks in Lebanon have raised fears that a wider war is inevitable.
