As the war rages in Gaza, Israel continues its campaign against Syrian military and Hezbollah targets, raising fears of regional spillover.

Israel has launched attacks on positions in Syria and Lebanon as part of its ongoing campaign against rival militaries and forces in the Middle East.

“The [Israeli army] The Israeli army attacked the military infrastructure of the Syrian army,” the Israeli military said in a post on the social media platform X on Tuesday.

“[Israeli military] “Warplanes have also attacked Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon,” she added, pledging that she would “continue to act against any threat to Israeli sovereignty.”

The Israeli military has been involved in cross-border fighting with Hezbollah and has launched repeated airstrikes into Syria since the war on Gaza began on October 7, raising fears that the conflict could spread across the region.

In response to yesterday’s launches into Israeli territory, the IDF attacked military infrastructure of the Syrian army.

IDF warplanes also attacked Hezbollah’s terrorist infrastructure in Lebanon.

The IDF will continue to act against any threat to Israel. pic.twitter.com/xSty1eyMkb

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) January 2, 2024

The latest attacks, which occurred between Monday and Tuesday, marked a rise in tensions between Israel and its neighbors, which it claimed had ties to enemy Iran.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Syrian state news agency SANA reported that the Israeli attacks came from the direction of the Golan Heights before dawn.

The airstrikes targeted “a number of locations in the Damascus area,” SANA reported, citing an unnamed military source, saying that only “material damage” was caused.

The Britain-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a target post near the town of Kanaker was housing members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, AFP news agency reported.

Parts of the southern Lebanese town of Yaroun also came under fire, the Israeli military said on Tuesday, after Hezbollah announced it had fired on Israeli units near the northern Israeli village of Sarit.

Iran links

Syria and Iran are regional allies, with President Bashar al-Assad receiving strong support from Tehran during the war in Syria.

Since its founding in 1982, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah has grown into a powerful “state within a state” in Lebanon and also supports Hamas in Gaza.

Israel has repeatedly said it will not allow Iran to expand its presence in Syria.

Tuesday’s attacks come on the heels of an airstrike nearby Aleppo According to the Syrian Defense Ministry, there was significant material damage at the end of December.

Since the start of the Syrian war, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes into Syrian territory, both on Syrian military targets and Hezbollah targets. As the war raged in Gaza, cross-border exchanges of fire between Hezbollah and Israel became more frequent.

In December, an Israeli airstrike outside Damascus killed Razi Moussavi senior advisor in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), responsible for coordinating the military alliance between Syria and Iran.

According to reports from the Iranian news agency INRA, Mousavi was part of an entourage that accompanied IRGC General Qassem Soleimani at Baghdad airport when he was killed by a US drone strike almost exactly four years ago.