ISRAELI jets killed at least 40 people during air strikes in Syria early this morning, with missiles hitting more than 18 sites from Deir Ezzor to the Iraqi border, according to a war monitoring group.

The raids, carried out with intelligence provided by the United States, targeted a series of warehouses in Syria that were being used as a part of the “pipeline” to store and stage Iranian weapons, according to a senior US intelligence official.

Speaking to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity, they  said that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had discussed the raid with Yossi Cohen, chief of Israel’s spy agency Mossad, at a public meeting in popular Washington restaurant Cafe Milano on Monday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said that the strikes on multiple positions killed nine Syrian soldiers and at least 31 fighters from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement.

“At 1.10am the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial assault on the town of Deir Ezzor and the Albu Kamal region,” Syria’s state news agency Sana said today, citing a military source. “The results of the aggression are currently being verified.”

SOHR spokesman Rami Abdul Rahman said the Israeli attack was the “deadliest since June 2018,” when missiles killed more than 55 people in the same region.

Israel had not commented on the air strikes as the Star went to print and often remains tight-lipped on military actions. But in 2019 Tel Aviv took the unusual step of admitting to having conducted hundreds of bombing raids on Syria that, it claims, targeted Iranian military outposts.

Syria claims the bombing raids have killed civilians and destroyed infrastructure, and critics have warned that the attacks are in breach of international law.