Israel air strikes hit Iran targets in Syria

Israeli warplanes struck Syria yesterday, hitting Iranian targets and killing 10 Syrian and foreign fighters in what the Israeli army called a retaliatory attack after explosive devices were found near one of its bases on the occupied Golan Heights. 

The air strikes came hours before US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was to land in Israel for talks including on Iran, in what was likely to be his last visit to the staunch American ally before President Donald Trump leaves office.

An Israeli army statement said its fighter jets had overnight hit eight "military targets belonging to the Iranian Quds Force and the Syrian armed forces". The elite Quds Force is the main foreign operations arm of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

The targets included "storage facilities, headquarters and military compounds" as well as "Syrian surface-to-air missile batteries," it said.

Syrian state news agency SANA said the strikes had killed three of its soldiers and wounded another. The monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 people were killed, including foreign fighters as well as Syrian soldiers.

Israel has carried out hundreds of air and missile strikes on Syria since civil war broke out there in 2011, targeting Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah forces as well as government troops.

Meanwhile, Iran yesterday said it would will "automatically" return to its nuclear commitments if US President-elect Joe Biden lifts sanctions imposed over the past two years.

Tehran's return to its commitments "can be done automatically and needs no conditions or even negotiations," Mohammad Javad Zarif said in comments published in the state-run Iran daily.