DAMASCUS: Syrian state media reported an Israeli strike on Monday on a village near the city of Homs, a day after a deadly strike on a building in the Damascus area. “An Israeli aggression” targeted the “surroundings of the Shinshar region south of Homs,” state news agency SANA said, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike targeted a Hezbollah munitions warehouse. The Britain-based Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria, added that successive blasts had sounded in the warehouse, without providing further details. SANA meanwhile reported that the motorway connecting Homs to the capital was temporarily cut off after the strike, which “targeted an aid gathering point for displaced Lebanese.” Israel has since September escalated a campaign targeting the Iran-backed Hezbollah group in Lebanon following a year of low-intensity cross-border exchanges of fire. Some 200,000 Lebanese have fled to neighboring Syria to escape Israeli bombardment targeting the country’s south and east, as well as southern Beirut, according to Lebanese authorities. Israel has also launched successive strikes on Syria, where it has for years been targeting Iran-backed groups including Hezbollah, though it rarely acknowledges individual strikes. On Sunday, the Observatory reported that Israel struck an apartment belonging to Hezbollah in a stronghold of pro-Iran groups south of Damascus, killing nine people including a commander.