Israeli strikes on Syria's west kill three, war monitor says

Israeli strikes Wednesday on Syria's west killed two soldiers, Syrian state media said, with a war monitor reporting a militant was also killed when the air raid hit a Hezbollah weapons depot.

"At exactly 17:22 (1422 GMT) this afternoon, the Israeli enemy carried out strikes... from the direction of the Mediterranean Sea targeting some of our air defence sites in Tartus," official news agency SANA quoted an unnamed military source as saying.

"The aggression led to the death of two soldiers, and wounded six others," the report said.

During more than a decade of war in Syria, neighbouring Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces and fighters of allied Lebanese group Hezbollah as well as Syrian army positions.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the latest strikes hit in addition to army positions a weapons depot belonging to Iran-backed Hezbollah near Al-Jammasah in Tartus province.

Al-Jammasah is located south of Tartus city, a bastion of the Syrian government and home to a naval port used by Russia, whose armed forces have backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The Britain-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria confirmed the deaths of two soldiers, adding that a fighter whose nationality was unknown had also been killed.

The Observatory said the strikes targeted a Syrian air defence base in the village of Karto, about 10 kilometres (six miles) away.

An Israeli military spokeswoman told AFP: "We do not comment on reports in foreign media."

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes it carries out on targets in Syria, but it has repeatedly said it would not allow its archfoe Iran, which supports Damascus, to expand its footprint there.

On 28 August, Israeli air strikes on Aleppo airport in northern Syria caused the grounding of flights, SANA said at the time.

A week earlier two fighters backing the Syrian government were killed in Israeli airstrikes on sites near Damascus, the Observatory had said.

With Iranian as well as Russian support, Assad's government has clawed back much of the territory it had lost to rebels early in the conflict that began in 2011.

Iran says it only deploys military advisers in Syria at the invitation of Damascus.

Syria's war has killed more than 500,000 people, displaced millions and battered the country's infrastructure and industry.

The conflict has pulled in foreign powers and jihadists, and while the frontlines have mostly quietened in recent years, large parts of the country's north remain outside government control.