Monitor says Israeli raid in Syria wounds pro-Iran fighters

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A war monitor said seven pro-Iran fighters were wounded early Monday in an Israeli strike near a Syrian border crossing with Lebanon, where Israel is bombing Hezbollah targets.

"Israeli warplanes after midnight carried out a new air strike, targeting a building in the vicinity of the Jdeidet Yabus border crossing with Lebanon," said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It said seven pro-Iran fighters, two of them Syrians, were wounded, without specifying the nationality of the others.

The crossing, known as Masnaa on the Lebanese side and located on the Beirut-Damascus road, has been inundated with Syrians and Lebanese fleeing Israeli strikes in Lebanon since September 23.

The Observatory said hours earlier an "Israeli drone shot highly explosive missiles at a villa" belonging to a Syrian army division led by President Bashar al-Assad's brother Maher in Yaafur near the Lebanese border.

The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria, said Hizbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards commanders used to frequent it.

Israel in recent days has increased the number of strikes on Israel-Lebanon border crossings.

The Israeli military said last week that its "fighter jets struck infrastructure along the Syria-Lebanon border used by Hizbollah to transfer weapons from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon".

Syria's official news agency SANA, citing a military source, said an Israeli air strike on Friday killed five Syrian soldiers near the border.

The United Nations' refugee head said on Monday that some 100,000 people have fled to Syria from Lebanon due to Israeli air strikes, a figure that has doubled in two days.

Since Syria's civil war erupted in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in the country, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters, including Hizbollah.

Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence there.