DAMASCUS, 26 December, 2020, (TON): A total of six pro-government fighters were killed during an Israeli strike that targeted positions in central Syria after midnight, a war monitor reported on Friday.

Two members of the militant group and four Iranian-backed fighters were killed. Israeli strikes also targeted dozens of sites in the Gaza Strip, according to Israel's military.

The Israeli missile strike targeted the defense factories where a scientific research center is located in the city of Masyaf in the western countryside of Hama province in central Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based watchdog group said the strike destroyed weapon depots run by Iranian fighters.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the shelling hit a post located a few kilometres from the Damascus International Airport, which was manned by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

For its side, the Syrian army said the Syrian air defenses had intercepted most of the Israeli missiles that were fired on Masyaf.

It is rare for Israel to directly claim responsibility for such strikes.

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

Iran has been a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government throughout the civil war that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.

Western intelligence sources say the increase in Israeli raids on Syria this year is part of a shadow war approved by Washington in a bid to check Iran’s military reach.