The head of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) on Wednesday confirmed that Israel was behind an airstrike on the Syria-Iraq border in early November that targeted a truck convoy and reportedly killed at least 10 people.
IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi claimed that a truck in the convoy was carrying weapons from Iran to Lebanon, while Syrian reports said it was carrying fuel. For their part, Hezbollah denied that it had anything to do with the trucks that were targeted.
Israel often bombs Syria but rarely takes credit for individual strikes. It’s not clear why Kohavi admitted to the airstrike, but he claimed that Israeli intelligence capabilities helped locate which truck to hit.
“We needed to send pilots to the right place and they had to evade surface-to-air missiles fired at them. They needed to attack, they needed to hit their targets and come back safely and not kill people who shouldn’t be killed. These are very advanced capabilities,” Kohavi said
The Wall Street Journal reported at the time that the strike destroyed two fuel tankers shortly after they entered Syria and killed 10 people, including an unknown number of Iranians. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the casualty figure higher, saying 15 people were killed and described them as mostly “pro-Iranian fighters.”
The latest known Israeli airstrikes in Syria took place this past weekend in the southern part of the country and reportedly targeted a Syrian military radar system. Hours after the strike, the IDF dropped threatening leaflets in the area, warning the Syrian military against cooperation with Hezbollah.
