A businessman with close ties to the Syrian regime was killed in an alleged Israeli airstrike targeting a vehicle on the Damascus-Beirut Highway on Monday afternoon, according to Syrian opposition sources.
“Two people were killed in an Israeli drone attack that targeted a car with Lebanese license plates near the Al-Masnaa’ Crossing on the Lebanese-Syrian border,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor aligned with the country’s opposition.
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The group identified one of the men killed in the targeted attack as Muhammad al-Qatirji, a close associate of Syrian President Bashar Assad, whose trucking company plays a central role in the regime’s business dealings with the Islamic State terrorist group. The Syrian had been sanctioned by the United States and Britain, the report said.
The Qatirji Company has also shipped weapons from Iraq to Syria, according to the U.S. State Department. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said al-Qatirji “finances a local militia numbering in the thousands to protect his interests and serve the regime” and financed Syrian attempts to “liberate” the Golan Heights from Israeli control.
The second casualty in the attack was not immediately identified, though the U.K. war monitor initially reported that one of the two men was a member of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group.
Arabic-language news reports claimed al-Qatirji had been “in contact with pro-Iranian militias and Hezbollah.”
On July 9, Yasser Nimr Qarnabsh, a former aide to Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, was killed when the Israel Defense Forces targeted his car near a checkpoint on the Damascus-Beirut Highway.
Qarnabsh was part of an elite Hezbollah unit responsible for transferring terrorists and weaponry from Syria to Lebanon and previously served as Nasrallah’s personal bodyguard, according to local media reports.
Overnight Saturday, the IDF struck a command center, air defense system and other military infrastructure belonging to the Syrian Armed Forces. The attack came in response to the launch of two suicide drones from Syria towards Eilat earlier in the day, according to Israel.
Israel has attacked hundreds of terrorist targets in Syria in recent years, as part of an effort to prevent Iranian military entrenchment in the country. However, Jerusalem rarely acknowledges these incidents.