A man was killed on Thursday in an Israeli strike inside Syria, the country’s state media reported.
Syria’s official SANA news reported that “a civilian” was killed when an Israeli drone fired on the car he was in in the Druze town of Khader, in the Quneitra area, adjacent to the Israeli Golan Heights.
The report did not identify the man.
Israel has not commented on the reports.
Various reports claim the man was a senior Hezbollah operative named Imad Tawil who was entrusted with developing Iran’s infrastructure in the areas adjacent to Syria’s border with Israel.
Israel has previously bombed Hezbollah and Iranian infrastructure under construction in the area, and has made it clear that any Iranian presence near the border is a red line.
The IDF in March 2019 announced that it had exposed a clandestine Hezbollah unit that was operating in southern Syria in the area near the border with Israel and where today’s attack occurred.
The unit’s objective is to establish another front against Israel from the Golan Heights, in addition to Hezbollah’s threat from Lebanon.
The IDF published classified information about the “Golan File,” the name for the unit which is commanded by Ali Musa Daqduq, a senior operative in the Lebanon-based terrorist organization.
Daqduq is wanted in the US for 2007 attacks on American servicemen in Iraq and was described by the US Treasury Department as “commander of a Hezbollah special forces unit and chief of a protective detail for Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah.”
The purpose of the Hezbollah infrastructure is to act against Israel at a time of deterioration. The infrastructure is at its preliminary stages and has yet to reach the level needed for operational activity and is still in the process of development and consolidation.
Since the exposure of the unit, Israel has reportedly acted against the Iranian-led attempt on several occasions.
In general, Iran’s military build-up in Syria remains a red line for Israel. The IAF has carried out thousands of attacks to thwart the Iranian entrenchment in the war-torn country.