Israeli missile strike kills soldier in Syria, Syrian state media says

CAIRO: An Israeli air strike killed a soldier in southern Syria on Thursday, Syrian state media reported, in an attack in a frontier area where Israel has expressed concern about

deployments

of Iran-backed forces.

An Israeli military spokesperson declined to comment on the report.

Israel has mounted frequent attacks against what it has described as Iranian targets in Syria, where Tehran-backed forces including Lebanon's Hezbollah have deployed over the last decade to support President Bashar al-Assad in Syria's war.

Citing a military source, Syrian state news agency

SANA

said "the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression", firing missiles from the

Golan Heights

, territory Israel captured from Syria in 1967.

Syrian air defences shot down most of the rockets, SANA said. The attack led to "the

martyrdom

of a soldier and some material losses", it added.

In 2019, then US President Donald Trump broke with other world powers by recognising Israel as sovereign on the Golan Heights, which it annexed in 1981 in a move not recognised internationally.