BEIRUT (Reuters) – An Israeli drone strike on a car crossing a Syrian checkpoint near the border with Lebanon on Wednesday killed three Palestinian fighters and one member of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, two security sources told Reuters.
The sources said the vehicle was not carrying weapons. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah or the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement, to which one of the sources said the three Palestinian fighters belonged.
Syrian local official Abdo al-Taqi told Syrian Radio that a car was targeted on Wednesday morning on the road between the Syrian capital Damascus and the Lebanese capital Beirut, killing four people.
Militants such as Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and other armed groups have fired rockets and drones at Israel from southern Lebanon. These groups have strong ties to Iran and the Syrian government, and have moved fighters and weapons across the porous Syrian-Lebanese border.
Israel has not commented on the incident. Although it takes responsibility for strikes it carries out in Lebanon, it rarely does the same for strikes it is accused of carrying out in Syria.
Israel has been targeting arms shipments and other military infrastructure in Syria for years, and has intensified its strikes there since October, when the war in Gaza began.
The drone strike on Wednesday came hours after an Israeli air strike hit a pickup truck in northeastern Lebanon near the Syrian border. A security source told Reuters the vehicle was carrying military equipment, likely a damaged rocket launcher en route for repair.
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