Syria monitor says Israeli strike kills businessman close to Assad

A monitor of Syria's civil war said an Israeli strike on a vehicle near the Lebanon border killed two people Monday including a Western sanctioned businessman close to President Bashar al-Assad.

The businessman, Baraa Katerji, "was responsible for funding" the Syrian Resistance to Liberate the Golan over the past two years, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The militant group, linked to Lebanon's Hezbollah movement, was formed to attack the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights from southern Syria.

Hezbollah has repeatedly targeted military positions in the Golan since October as part of attacks on Israel in support of ally Hamas following the Palestinian militant group's October 7 attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

Katerji, whose full name is Muhammed Baraa Katerji, "was killed when an Israeli drone targeted the car he was in, along with another person" near the Lebanon border, added the Observatory, which relies on a network of sources inside Syria.

Katerji and his brother Hussam are among the most prominent businessmen to have emerged after civil conflict erupted in Syria in 2011, and are subject to Western sanctions.

Syria's pro-government Al-Watan online daily reported that "businessman Baraa Katerji died in a Zionist strike that targeted his car at the Syria-Lebanon border".

According to the Observatory, Katerji ran a company responsible for supplying oil to government-held areas from parts of Syria's northeast controlled by Kurdish-led forces.

Katerji, whose surname can also be written Qatirji or al-Qatirji, has been sanctioned by the United States.

In 2018, Washington named Muhammad al-Qatirji and his Qatirji Company as a key broker of fuel trade between the Assad government and the Islamic State jihadist group, which controlled oil-rich areas of eastern Syria at that time.

Since the Syrian civil war erupted in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in the country, mainly targeting army positions and Iran-backed fighters, including from Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Last week, the Observatory said an Israeli strike in Syria near the Lebanese border killed two people, with a source close to Hezbollah saying a former bodyguard to the group's leader died in the raid.

Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and later annexed it in a move largely unrecognised by the international community.

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