Airstrikes in Syria killed at least 18 people and injured dozens of others, Syria’s state news media reported on Monday, blaming Israel for the attacks in and around a city known as a center for the development of weapons, including missiles.
The Syrian state news agency, SANA, said multiple sites were hit in and near Masyaf, a small city in northwestern Syria; most of its reports were vague about what, exactly, was struck, but some said the targets were military sites. Israeli officials declined to comment on the attack.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain that tracks the conflict in Syria, confirmed the strikes and said they hit an area containing a scientific research institute where work on “developing short- and medium-range precision missiles” is conducted. It cited unnamed sources in the Syrian security forces.
Independent experts, Israeli officials and the U.S. government have described that institute as a center of weapons research and development, aided by Syria’s ally Iran, with the work being done there including chemical, biological, and potentially nuclear weapons as well as missiles used by Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militia group in Lebanon that is fighting Israel.
Israel has struck Masyaf, about 25 miles from the Mediterranean coast, several times in the past.
The airstrikes late Sunday night and early Monday amounted to one of the deadliest attacks in Syria in months. SANA said that in addition to the 18 dead, 37 people had been injured in the strikes, including six who were in critical condition. The agency said that the strikes had damaged roads, water, power and telephone infrastructure.
The Syrian Observatory put the death toll higher, saying that at least 25 people had been killed, including Syrian combatants, people working with Iranian militias and civilians. It was not possible to confirm the reported tolls independently.
The attacks added to an already volatile standoff between Israel and Iran’s allies and proxies across the region.
In the past, Israel has acknowledged carrying out hundreds of assaults on targets in Syria that it says are linked to Iran. A series of airstrikes in March near the northern Syrian city of Aleppo killed at least 44 people, including 36 Syrian soldiers and seven members of Hezbollah, the observatory said.
An April 1 strike on the Iranian embassy compound in Damascus, the capital, killed the commanding general of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, his deputy, several other Iranian officials, and members of allied forces.
Tehran’s network of proxy militias include Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in the Gaza Strip and multiple groups in Iraq.
But Tehran has reserved its most generous support for Syria, backing not only the government but also armed groups operating there. Iran’s backing was vital to the regime of Bashar al-Assad surviving the civil war that began in 2011.
The close relationship dates to Iran’s own revolution in 1979, when Syria backed the new government in Tehran as others shunned it. Iran, for its part, views Syria as a strategic partner that offers land access to Hezbollah.
The war between Hamas and Israel, which has accelerated tensions on multiple fronts across the region, is nearing its one-year mark on Oct. 7.
On Monday, the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders for northern Gaza after it said rockets fired from the area had crossed into Israeli territory. The latest evacuation order covers parts of the city of Beit Lahia, according to a social media post by Avichay Adraee, an Israeli military spokesman. The zone includes areas where Israel had agreed to pause fighting for a few hours each day, as part of a large-scale polio vaccination program, according to the United Nations.
The Gazan Health Ministry reported that more than 441,000 children had received a first dose of the vaccine in central and southern Gaza in the first two stages of the campaign; the third phase of the campaign in Gaza was expected to begin on Tuesday in the north, to reach 150,000 more, according to Jonathan Crickx, a UNICEF spokesman. It was unclear how the evacuation orders would affect localized pauses in fighting that Israel and Hamas have agreed to.
Diplomatic efforts to bring about a comprehensive cease-fire continue, with both Hamas and Israel accusing each other of standing in the way of a deal. Last week, two American officials told The New York Times that Hamas had recently toughened its terms for the release of hostages, asking for more on the release of Palestinian prisoners in the opening phase of an agreement.
On Monday, Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’s political bureau, issued a statement saying it was “a lie” that the group had made additional demands. He said it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel who had placed new conditions on a deal.
The talks are being pushed by the Biden Administration, which argues that a truce in Gaza would calm tensions across the region and would bring home the dozens of Israeli hostages believed to be still held in Gaza.
Israel and Iran have for decades fought a clandestine, low-level war, but attacks across borders have escalated since Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza in response the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack.
Hezbollah and the Israeli military have for months traded fire across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon, and Iran in April launched a wave of missiles and drones at Israel in response to the strike on its embassy complex in Syria. Iran also vowed revenge in July after a top Hamas leader was killed in Tehran, though a large-scale response has not yet happened.
The overnight strikes in Syria hit an area containing one of the campuses of the Scientific Studies and Research Center. The institute has many sites across Syria, and Masyaf is where the country’s military research organization maintains one of its most important weapons-development facilities, experts say.
The United States in 2005 prohibited U.S. citizens and residents from doing business with the center, and in 2007, the Treasury Department froze the assets of center subsidiaries, listing the S.S.R.C. as the “Syrian government agency responsible for developing and producing nonconventional weapons and the missiles to deliver them.”
Israeli security experts at the nonprofit Alma Research and Education Center, in an August 2023 report on the Syrian research center, said it serves as a “growth engine for the development and production of modern conventional weapons based on Iranian technology on Syrian soil.” The report noted that the center’s “operation shortens and saves the logistics of transferring weapons from Iran, which is more vulnerable to harm/disruption and obstruction.”
Israel is believed to have targeted scientists at the Masyaf site before. In 2018, Aziz Asbar, one of Syria’s most important rocket scientists, who had led a top-secret weapons-development unit and worked closely with Iran, was killed in a car bombing in Masyaf, apparently carried out by Mossad, the Israeli spy agency.
Rawan Sheikh Ahmad and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.
