A missile fired by Syrian air defenses in the sky of Damascus (French-Archive)

Two security sources told Reuters that Israeli strikes on the city of Aleppo in northern Syria early on Friday morning led to the killing of about 38 people, including 5 members of the Lebanese Hezbollah group.

For its part, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) quoted a military source as saying that a number of civilians and soldiers were killed after “the Israeli enemy launched an air attack from the direction of Athriya, southeast of Aleppo, targeting a number of points in the Aleppo countryside.”

The same source added that this happened in conjunction with "a drone attack carried out by terrorist organizations from Idlib and the western countryside of Aleppo in an attempt to target civilians in the city of Aleppo and its environs."

The agency did not mention a specific number of deaths, nor did it clarify whether the losses resulted from Israeli air strikes or attacks by armed groups.

She added - quoting the military source - "The aggression resulted in the martyrdom and wounding of a number of civilians and soldiers, and material losses to public and private property."

The agency also recalled the killing of civilians and the occurrence of material damage as a result of an Israeli aggression that targeted a residential building in the Damascus countryside yesterday.

Activists and Syrian media shared scenes following an Israeli air strike that targeted a number of sites in the city’s countryside.

During the past years, Israel launched hundreds of air strikes in Syria, targeting mainly Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah targets - including warehouses and shipments of weapons and ammunition - as well as Syrian army sites, while Damascus repeatedly spoke of reserving the right to respond.

Since the Al-Aqsa Flood operation on the seventh of last October in southern Israel and the subsequent Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, Israel has been escalating its strikes on what it says are the bases of Iranian-backed armed groups in Syria.

Tel Aviv also targeted the air defenses of the Syrian army and some Syrian forces.

Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire across the Israeli-Lebanese border since the outbreak of the war in Gaza, in the largest escalation since the month-long 2006 war between them.

Source: Al Jazeera + agencies