Videos and photos posted on social media following Wednesday’s strikes appear to show three large columns of black smoke rising from the Palmyra area, external.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, cited its sources on the ground as saying that Israeli fighter jets struck three locations in the town.
Two were in the al-Jamiya neighbourhood, including a weapons depot near the industrial zone inhabited by families of Iran-backed fighters of Iraqi and other foreign nationalities, it said.
The third location was nearby and targeted a meeting attended by leaders of Iran-backed militias based in Palmyra and the surrounding desert as well as leaders of the Iraqi group Nujaba and Hezbollah, it added.
The SOHR initially reported that 41 people were killed, but later said the death toll had risen to 68.
It identified them as 42 Syrian members of Iran-backed militias, and 22 foreign members, mostly from Nujaba, and four Lebanese members of Hezbollah.
Last Thursday, Israel confirmed that it had carried out several air strikes in the Syrian capital, Damascus, which Syrian state media said killed 15 people.
The Israeli military said it had struck “terrorist infrastructure sites and command centres” belonging to the armed group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The previous day, the military said it had hit smuggling routes between Syria and Lebanon that were used to deliver weapons from Iran to Hezbollah.
