BEIRUT — An Israeli drone strike on a car Monday near the Lebanon-Syria border killed a prominent Syrian businessman who was sanctioned by the United States and had close ties to the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to pro-government media and an official from an Iran-backed group.
Mohammed Baraa Katerji was killed when a drone strike hit his car near the area of Saboura, a few kilometers or miles inside Syria after apparently crossing from Lebanon. Israel's air force has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in recent years, mainly targeting members of Iran-backed groups and Syria's military. But it has been rare to hit personalities from within the government.
The strike also came as Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah group have been exchanging fire on an almost daily basis since early October, after the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
An official from an Iran-backed group said that Katerji was killed instantly while in his SUV on the highway linking Lebanon with Syria. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak to the media.
The pro-government Al-Watan daily quoted unnamed ''sources'' as saying that Katerji, 48, was killed in a ''Zionist drone strike on his car.'' It gave no further details.
Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based opposition war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said that Katerji was killed while in a car with Lebanese licence plates, adding that he was apparently targeted because he used to fund the ''Syrian resistance'' against Israel in the Golan Heights, as well as his links to Iran-backed groups in Syria.
Israel, which has vowed to stop Iranian entrenchment in its northern neighbor, has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets in government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, but it rarely acknowledges them.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC, sanctioned Katerji in 2018 as Assad's middleman to trade oil with the Islamic State group and for facilitating weapons shipments from Iraq to Syria.