Missile strikes kill 26

• Israeli minister 'not aware' of latest strikes

• Syrian army renews push on rebel enclave

Missile strikes on central Syria killed 26 pro-regime fighters, most of them Iranians, a monitor said yesterday, in a raid that bore the hallmarks of Tehran's arch-foe Israel.

The Syrian regime, which denounced a "fresh aggression" after the strikes, meanwhile continued to flush out armed groups from the capital with more deals to transfer fighters to the country's north.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, missile strikes hit two military targets in Aleppo and Hama provinces late Sunday.

The strike on Hama province hit a base known as the 47th Brigade where pro-regime fighters are stationed. Both hits destroyed surface-to-surface missiles, the monitor said.

"At least 26 fighters were killed, including four Syrians," in the Hama strike, said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Britain-based monitoring organisation.

"The others are foreign fighters, a vast majority of them Iranians," he told AFP. "Given the nature of the target, it is likely to have been an Israeli strike."

Israeli Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz told army radio yesterday 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."

Israeli media reported that the security cabinet was due to hold an emergency session later yesterday.

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.

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.

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 groups in southern neighbourhoods of Damascus.