Israel bombs Syria air defense bases

BEIRUT, Lebanon (AFP) — Israeli missiles struck two air defense bases in southern Syria overnight, a war monitor said Tuesday, as tensions surge on Israel’s northern border after a deadly rocket strike on the annexed Golan Heights.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported no casualties in the overnight strikes in Daraa province, which abuts the armistice line separating Syrian and Israeli forces on the Golan.

Syria’s state-run media did not report any strikes.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed a “severe” response to Saturday’s strike, which killed 12 youths in a Druze Arab town in the Golan.

“The State of Israel will not, and cannot, let this pass. Our response will come and it will be severe,” he said on a visit to the town of Majdal Shams on Monday.

He was greeted by protests during the visit, which came after mourners gathered in the town to bury the last victim, 11-year-old Guevara Ibrahim.

Israel and the United States have blamed the strike on Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, which has traded near-daily fire with Israeli forces since the war in Gaza between Hamas militants and Israel began in October last year.

Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib said a flurry of diplomatic activity has sought to contain the anticipated Israeli response.

“Israel will escalate in a limited way and Hezbollah will respond in a limited way... These are the assurances we’ve received,” Bou Habib said in an interview with Lebanese broadcaster Al-Jadeed.

Flights suspended

Hezbollah has evacuated some positions in south and east Lebanon, a source close to the group told Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Some airlines, including Air France and Lufthansa, have suspended flights to and from Lebanon, with one Syrian-German traveller at Beirut airport telling AFP she was trying to find a new flight, “but they’re all either packed or canceled.”

United Kingdom Foreign Secretary David Lammy, meanwhile, said on social media platform X that his government was “advising British nationals to leave Lebanon and not to travel to the country. This is a fast-moving situation.”

On Monday, Hezbollah said it had launched “dozens of Katyusha rockets” at an Israeli military site following the killing of two of its fighters.

The group later claimed additional strikes against military positions in Israel’s north. Official Lebanese media said a Syrian national died from wounds after an Israeli drone strike in southern Lebanon.

The cross-border violence has already killed more than 500 people in Lebanon, most of them fighters, and dozens of civilians and soldiers on the Israeli side.

Hezbollah has said its attacks are in support of Hamas, and that they would stop if a ceasefire was reached in Gaza, where war broke out on 7 October when the