BEIRUT/DAMASCUS: Senior officials of Palestinian militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad have held talks with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah about achieving “real victory” in their war with the Zionist entity, the Lebanese group said Wednesday. The Hezbollah statement did not specify when or where Nasrallah met with Hamas number two Saleh Al-Aruri and Islamic Jihad leader Ziad Nakhaleh beyond saying that it was at an undisclosed location in Lebanon.

News of the meeting comes as Hezbollah and allied Palestinian factions exchange daily fire with the Zionist army across the Lebanon-Zionist entity border, raising fears of a new front in the Zionist entity’s war with Hamas in Gaza. The three groups are part of the “axis of resistance” — Palestinian, Lebanese, Syrian and other Iran-backed armed groups opposed to the Zionist entity.

They discussed what “the axis of resistance must do at this critical stage to achieve real victory... in Gaza and Palestine and stop” the Zionist entity’s “brutal aggression”, the statement said. They also discussed “recent events in the Gaza Strip since the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” — the unprecedented Oct 7 Hamas attack.

Nasrallah and the Palestinian militant leaders “agreed to keep coordinating and daily following up on developments,” the statement added. Hezbollah and Hamas have long been part of a “joint operations room” with the Quds Force — the foreign operations arm of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards — a source close to Hezbollah previously told AFP on condition of anonymity. The meeting also touched upon the cross-border fire on

the Lebanon-Zionist entity border, the statement said.

At least 52 people have been killed in Lebanon according to an AFP tally, mostly Hezbollah combatants but also four civilians, including Reuters journalist Issam Abdallah. Four people have been killed in the Zionist entity, including one civilian.

Meanwhile, Zionist strikes killed eight soldiers in southern Syria on Wednesday, later returning to bomb Aleppo airport for the fourth time in a fortnight, the defense ministry in Damascus said. The Zionist entity said the first strike was in response to earlier rocket fire. Hours later, Zionist forces struck Aleppo airport in the north, the Syrian defense ministry said as regional tensions simmer over the Zionist-Hamas war in Gaza.

Persistent rocket fire and artillery exchanges across the Zionist entity’s northern border with Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia and allied Palestinian factions, have raised fears of a new front in the war. Pro-Hezbollah fighters in Syria’s south have also exchanged cross-border fire with the Zionist entity several times since last week.

“Around 1:45 am (2245 GMT Tuesday), the (Zionist) enemy carried out an aerial aggression from the occupied Golan Heights,” the defense ministry said of the strikes that killed eight soldiers and wounded seven others. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor with a wide network of sources on the ground in the war-ravaged country, put the number of dead soldiers at 11, including four officers.

The strikes “destroyed arms depots and a Syrian air defense radar” and also targeted an infantry unit, it said. On Tuesday evening, the Observatory had said “fighters loyal to Hezbollah,” which fights alongside government forces in the Syrian conflict, had “launched two rockets towards the occupied Syrian Golan” from Syria’s southern province of Daraa.

After the strike, residents in Daraa province told AFP Zionist planes dropped leaflets warning the Syrian army and Palestinian factions not to attack. “Syrian commanders... bear full responsibility for operations... from Syrian territory,” they read warning that every attack “on (the Zionist entity) will be met with an iron fist”.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Zionist entity struck Aleppo airport with Syria’s defense ministry saying the strike came “from the direction of the Mediterranean sea, west of Latakia”. Transport ministry official Suleiman Khalil said the runway had been targeted by a strike, but without specifying the source. “The same Aleppo airport runway that was targeted before was struck again,” he said. “The airport was about to finish repairs and schedule flights, but it was once again put out of service.”

Zionist strikes had already put Syria’s two main airports in Damascus and Aleppo out of service several times in the past two weeks. During more than a decade of civil war in Syria, the Zionist entity has launched hundreds of air strikes on its northern neighbor, primarily targeting Hezbollah fighters and other Iran-backed forces as well as Syrian army positions.

The Zionist entity rarely comments on individual strikes on Syria, but it has repeatedly said it won’t allow arch-foe Iran, which backs President Bashar Al-Assad’s government, to expand its presence there. The Zionist entity occupied much of the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it in a move never recognized by the United Nations. – Agencies