Missile strikes in central Syria have killed at least 26 pro-regime fighters, most of them Iranians, a monitor said on Monday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the missiles struck a military base in the province of Hama late Sunday, in an assault it said bore the hallmarks of an Israeli operation.
"At least 26 fighters were killed, including four Syrians," the monitor said, adding that the main target of the missile strike was the base of the regime's 47th Brigade.
"The others are foreign fighters, a vast majority of them Iranians," said Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based war monitor.
"Given the nature of the target, it is likely to have been an Israeli strike," he said, adding that strikes also hit an air base in nearby Aleppo province where surface-to-surface missiles were stored.
Syrian state media late Sunday had denounced a "fresh aggression" following reported raids by "enemy missiles".
Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz told army radio on Monday morning that he was "not aware" of the latest strikes.
But, he said, "all the violence and instability in Syria is the result of Iran's attempts to establish a military presence there. Israel will not allow the opening of a northern front in Syria."
The latest strikes came amid heightened tensions in Syria after Damascus and its ally Iran accused Israel on April 9 of conducting deadly strikes against a military base in the centre of the country.
At least 14 soldiers, including seven Iranians, were killed in the strike on a military base in Homs province.
Days later, on April 14, the United States, France and Britain bombarded several Syrian regime military positions in response to a suspected chemical attack on the rebel stronghold of Douma which killed dozens, according to rescue services.
Syria remains technically at war with neighbouring Israel, which is concerned at the growing presence of Iranian forces and those of Tehran's Lebanese ally Hezbollah on Syrian territory.
Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman vowed in an interview on Thursday to strike at any attempt by Iran to establish a "military foothold" in Syria.
"If they attack Tel Aviv, we'll strike Tehran," he told the Arabic-language Elaph news website.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday in Tel Aviv, lashed out at Iran's "ambition to dominate the Middle East".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday said he has "proof" that Iran has a secret nuclear weapons programme that it "has been hiding for years from the international community in its secret atomic archive".
His main US ally, which led an unprecedented wave of missile strikes on Syria's chemical weapons infrastructure on April, is considering pulling out of the landmark deal.
Damascus transfers
The Syrian government has focused its efforts in 2018 on securing the capital Damascus, the heart of which was spared the worst of the seven-year-old conflict but was long surrounded by rebel-held pockets.
Backed by massive Russian military support, the regime took full control of the Eastern Ghouta enclave earlier this month.
The sprawling semi-rural area east of Damascus had been home to thousands of armed Islamist and jihadist fighters, who were besieged for years but sporadically fired rockets and mortar rounds on the capital.
Pro-regime forces are now battling jihadists from the Islamic State group and other armed factions in southern neighbourhoods of Damascus.
After days of air strikes and heavy fighting, state media reported late Sunday that those areas would be evacuated under deals similar to those that emptied other enclaves around Damascus in recent weeks.
The first evacuations from Yarmuk, a neighbourhood once home to a Palestinian refugee camp and the main hub of IS forces in southern Damascus, began on Monday night, SANA news agency said.
Five buses carrying 200 rebels and their families left Yarmuk, it said,
But as they set off, IS jihadists fired mortar rounds at the outskirts of Yarmuk, wounding 14 people, SANA added.
The transfer deal does not include IS fighters, but other jihadists from a former Al-Qaeda affiliate who control pockets inside Yarmuk, Abdel Rahman said.
