Israel shells Syria's Daraa province after 'rocket falls in occupied Golan'

Israeli forces shelled shared Syrian regime and Hezbollah military sites on Monday after a rocket launched from Syria fell in the occupied Golan Heights.

The Israeli shelling targeted locations in Daraa province in southern Syria, The New Arab's Arabic edition Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reported.

The Syrian media activist group Horan Free League (HFL) said armed brigades launched a Soviet-era Katyusha rocket towards the Golan area from Daraa.

"The Israeli occupation's artillery responded by shelling the vicinity of Tel Al-Jabiyyah and Tel Al-Jomoua, west of the city of Nawa," the group said.

The New Arab cannot independently verify these claims.

The Golan Heights is Syrian territory illegally occupied by Israel since 1967 which Israel annexed in 1981, in a move the UN Security Council branded "null and void".

On 16 March, Israeli artillery targeted military sites controlled by Hezbollah and Syrian regime forces in Tel Al-Jomoua after a rocket was launched at the Golan from the area.

Hezbollah and the Syrian regime are both backed by Iran.

Hezbollah and the Houthis, a Yemeni rebel group also backed by Iran, have been engaged in armed escalations with Israel amid its ferocious assault on Gaza, which has so far killed over 33,200 Palestinians.

The International Court of Justice in January said Israel was plausibly breaching the Genocide Convention in Gaza.

Israel bombed Iran's consulate in Damascus last week, killing senior Iranian military commander Mohammad Reza Zahedi and six other members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp.

A replacement consulate was opened on Monday by Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian.

Iran has said it would respond to the strike and one official warned that Israeli embassies would not be safe.