Israeli strike targets Syria’s Mediterranean port city of Latakia

An Israeli strike targeting Syria’s Mediterranean port city of Latakia early on Thursday resulted in fires breaking out there, Syrian state news agency SANA reported.

Firefighters were working on extinguishing the fires, SANA added.

Two people were injured and private properties were damaged, state media reported citing a military statement.

Syrian state television reported the country’s air defences had confronted Israeli targets over Latakia.

Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years, but has ramped up such raids since last year’s Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian militant group Hamas on Israeli territory.

In Other Developments:

16 killed in Israeli attack on Nabatieh

A strike on one of the biggest cities in southern Lebanon killed 16 people, including the city’s mayor and four members of a UN relief team.

The Israeli attack hit Nabatieh’s municipal headquarters during a meeting to coordinate aid deliveries to residents and those displaced by war.

Lebanon’s prime minister, Najib Mikati, condemned the strikes, saying they “intentionally targeted a meeting of the municipal council”.  

The Israeli military said it had struck dozens of Hezbollah targets and dismantled “underground infrastructure” in the attack. 

UNIFIL watchtower fired on by Israeli tank

UNIFIL says one of its watchtowers was damaged this morning after being fired at by an Israeli tank.

It said peacekeepers at a position near the village of Kafer Kela in southern Lebanon observed an Israel Defence Forces tank “firing at their watchtower”.

It said two cameras were destroyed and the tower was damaged in the process.

Netanyahu: ‘We found state-of-the-art Russian weapons in Hezbollah tunnels’

Benjamin Netanyahu says Israel’s military has found “state-of-the-art Russian weapons” inside Hezbollah tunnels in southern Lebanon.

The Israel Defence Forces launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon nearly three weeks ago in what it described as “limited, localised and targeted” raids against Hezbollah.

Mr Netanyahu French newspaper Le Figaro newspaper that under a 2006 UN Security Council resolution, only the Lebanese army was allowed to have weapons south of the country’s key Litani river.

“However, in this area, Hezbollah has dug hundreds of tunnels and caches, where we have just found a quantity of state-of-the-art Russian weapons,” he said.

Israel’s prime minister also said it is not Israel’s aim to provoke a “new civil war in Lebanon” and that if one were to start it would be a “tragedy”.

“Our only aim is to allow our citizens living along the Lebanon frontier to go home and feel safe,” he said.

Israel has around 60,000 residents that evacuated the north of the country because of cross-border shelling with Hezbollah that started after the launch of the war with Hamas on 7 October 2023.