Four dead, ten wounded: that was the toll Syrian officials and a British-based monitor put on a night of Israeli strikes on May 29, 2024. The figures differ by source, and they are worth reading closely.
The worst-hit civilians were in Baniyas, a Mediterranean port city. Syria’s defense ministry said the attack came at about 19:30 and was launched “from the direction of Lebanese territory.” In its words, it hit a central site and a residential building, killing a girl and wounding 10 civilians. Rudaw, citing the state news agency SANA, gave her age as 2.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the war from Britain, put the Baniyas wounded at 20, double the ministry’s count. It also offered a different account of how the girl died. Arab News relayed the monitor’s claim that an Israeli missile and a Syrian air defense missile collided and fell on the coast.
Homs: the Hezbollah toll
A second strike landed in the Homs countryside, where the Observatory said Israel hit a military site in the east. Three Syrian fighters affiliated with Lebanon’s Hezbollah died there, according to the monitor as quoted by Arab News and Press TV. Add the girl in Baniyas and the total reaches the four that Press TV reported. Rudaw’s version of the Observatory’s statement is higher: six Hezbollah fighters, three of them Syrians and three of them not.
Earlier in the day, SANA had said air defenses intercepted “enemy targets in the skies of the city of Homs.” Israel offered no immediate comment, which fits its long habit of staying silent on individual strikes in Syria, the Jerusalem Post noted.
A familiar pattern
None of this was new ground. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since the civil war began, mostly against military positions and Iran-backed forces, Hezbollah among them. Officials have said repeatedly that they will not allow Iran to expand its military presence there. The tempo rose after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel and the war in Gaza that followed.
Syria and Israel are still technically at war, a legacy of Israel’s occupation of the Golan Heights since 1967, Press TV noted.
Baniyas is the kind of target that sets this night apart from most. It is a populated coastal city, and the ministry’s own account puts a residential building at the center of the attack. The Jerusalem Post, relying on Syrian military sources, described the dead as a child. The Observatory’s reading was less settled about who or what caused her death, and Israel has said nothing to settle it.
Sources
- Syria says Israeli strike on Baniyas kills girl, injures 10
- Syria says Israeli strike kills girl, wounds 10 civilians
- Israeli Airstrikes Kill 4, Including Child, Across Syria
- Jerusalem Post, breaking news
