France warns Iran against ‘mly provocation’

BEIRUT: Israeli strikes on several areas of Syria overnight killed at least 23 fighters, including five Syrian regime troops and 18 other allied forces, a monitor said on Thursday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an officer was among the regime troops killed in the strikes and that the casualties included foreigners.

Israel’s army said it hit dozens of Iranian military targets in Syria.

The Russian defence ministry, whose country has forces in Syria supporting the regime, said 28 Israeli warplanes took part in the raids and around 70 missiles were fired.

Areas near Damascus as well as in the centre and southwest of the country were among the targets, the Observatory said.

The strikes "caused human losses in a number of the targeted areas", it said, adding the death toll was likely to rise.

Syria’s army announced a death toll of just three people.

"A number of missiles of the Israeli enemy killed three people and wounded two others," an army spokesman said on state television.

The strikes also "destroyed a radar station and an arms depot, and inflicted material damage on a number of air force battalions", it said.

Israel said it targeted Syrian positions after rocket fire towards its forces in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights that it blamed on Iran.

A senior military pro-regime source in Syria confirmed the salvo of rockets, but insisted Israel fired first.

The strikes come after the Syrian army late on Tuesday said it intercepted two Israeli missiles, while the Observatory said eight Iranians were among 15 foreign pro-regime fighters killed in that attack.

Since the start of Syria’s civil war in 2011, Israel has repeatedly targeted positions of the Syrian army and Lebanon’s movement Hizbullah backing it inside the country.

Meanwhile, France on Thursday called on Iran to refrain from "any military provocation" in Syria following a series of Israeli strikes on what it said were Iranian positions in the country. A foreign ministry spokesman also warned Tehran "against any temptation for regional dominance", a matter that French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian would address in talks with his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif next week.

The Israeli strikes in Syria come just days after US President Donald Trump withdrew from a key 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, in part because it does not attempt to curb Tehran’s role in several crises in the Middle East.

Tehran has portrayed itself as the focus of Middle East "resistance" against Israel, which said it struck the Syria sites in retaliation for rocket fire it blamed on Iran’s Al-Quds force.

The foreign ministry reiterated France’s "unwavering support for Israel’s security and condemns all attempts to harm it."

He also called for "restraint by all sides in order to avoid a dangerous escalation of tensions in the Middle East.

"That is why, as the president has said, it hopes in particular to begin talks with Iran over a larger framework that would encompass its nuclear activities as well as its ballistic missile programme and a solution to crises in the region," it said. Iran is backing the regime of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in his seven-year civil war against rebel opposition groups, and is also supporting Shiite militia forces in Iraq.

UN experts have also accused Iran of violating an arms embargo in Yemen by sending missiles and other weaponry to Huthi rebels fighting government forces backed by Saudi Arabia, Tehran’s archrival in the region.

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson condemned Iranian rocket attacks against Israeli forces and called on the Islamic Republic to refrain from any further actions that would destabilise the region.

"The United Kingdom condemns in the strongest terms the Iranian rocket attacks against Israeli forces," Johnson said.