Israeli strike kills policeman in Syria's Quneitra

W300

Israeli bombardment on Wednesday killed a policeman in the south of Syria near the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, state media said, the day after a deadly air strike on the capital.

Israel has repeatedly struck Syria throughout the civil war that started in 2011, but it has ramped these up in recent weeks as it also pounds Lebanon.

Citing a police official, the official SANA news agency reported "the death of a security force member and wounding of another in an Israeli strike" on the outskirts of Quneitra city.

It comes after a strike in the Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh late Tuesday, that a war monitor said targeted a building used by Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

The Syrian government said it killed seven civilians.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitor on Wednesday reported a higher toll of nine civilians, including four children.

The Britain-based organization said four others were also killed, including two members of Hezbollah.

Last week, the Observatory said an Israeli strike on Mazzeh killed four people, including the son-in-law of the late Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed in an Israeli air strike on south Beirut last month.

Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence.

Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah have been among the Syrian government's most important allies in the country's more than decade-old civil war.