Airstrikes targeted sites near Damascus in Syria and deep inside Lebanon late Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement.

In Syria, the strikes hit military storage sites that presented a “threat,” while the Lebanese bombing targeted Hezbollah operatives who were violating the terms of a ceasefire, the military said.

Syrian and Lebanese sources reported that a number of people were killed in the attacks.

“The presence of military assets and forces in the southern part of Syria constitutes a threat to the citizens of the State of Israel,” the Israeli military said. “The IDF will continue to act to remove any threat to the citizens of the State of Israel.”

Defense Minister Israel Katz also confirmed that Israel was carrying out airstrikes in southern Syria after blasts were reported in several areas south of Damascus.

“The Air Force is attacking strongly in southern Syria as part of the new policy we have defined of pacifying southern Syria – and the message is clear: we will not allow southern Syria to become southern Lebanon,” his spokesperson said in a statement referring to the volatile situation in Lebanon where Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah has repeatedly provoked conflicts, most recently a war last year.

“We will not endanger the security of our citizens,” Katz said. “Any attempt by Syrian regime forces and the country’s terrorist organizations to establish themselves in the security zone in southern Syria — will be met with fire.”

Israeli planes struck the town of Kisweh, approximately 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of Damascus, a Syrian security source and Syria TV said. The security source said a military site was targeted, without providing further details.

Additional Israeli air raids hit a town in the southern province of Daraa, residents and Syria TV said.

Residents of Damascus and Reuters reporters in the city heard the sound of airplanes flying several low passes over the capital and a series of blasts.

There was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities.

UK-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that Israel had launched strikes on multiple areas in Syria. They included the countryside outside of Damascus, several points in southern Syria, and on the border between Syria and Lebanon.

The observatory, a British-based outfit of unclear funding, reported that two soldiers with the new Syrian government’s security forces and two civilians were killed in the strikes.

It said that the deaths were caused by Israeli strikes at a “military unit’s headquarters southwest of Damascus.”

A video shared on social media reportedly showed demonstrators marching in Damascus after the strikes and calling on the new Syrian government to bomb Tel Aviv in response to the attacks.

Any Syrian army forces that move south of Damascus will risk “facing an Israeli response by fire,” an Israeli official told The Times of Israel.

“We are not going to allow jihadists near our border, we are not going to allow threats to the Druze in Syria… and we will not allow another October 7 to happen in the Golan,” said the official.

The strikes come after several Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, demanded in recent days the demilitarization of southern Syria and warned that Israel would prevent the Syrian army from moving south of Damascus.

On Sunday, Netanyahu warned Syria’s new leadership against moving troops into southern Syria.

The premier vowed Monday that Israeli forces would remain “for the foreseeable future” in a buffer zone established on the border after the fall of the Assad regime in December.

“We will not allow the presence of the HTS organization or the new Syrian Army in the area south of Damascus,” he said, referring to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group that led the overthrow of the Assad regime.

“Southern Syria will be demilitarized,” Netanyahu declared in a live video broadcast to the AIPAC conference in the US.

In the weeks after rebels stormed into Damascus, Israel carried out multiple air raids to destroy Syrian army assets, saying the move was to prevent the weapons from falling into the hands of those who might pose a threat to the country.

The IDF has also worked to gather or destroy weapons that were left behind by fleeing Syrian army soldiers at military posts in the buffer zone.

The IDF also said it carried out an airstrike against a group of Hezbollah operatives in Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley.

The strike was carried out after the military said it identified the operatives at a “strategic weapons” manufacturing and storage facility belonging to the terror group.

The operatives’ activity at the site is a “blatant violation” of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Lebanon, the IDF said.

Lebanese state media said that the Israeli strike killed at least two people in the country’s east.

“An enemy drone carried out an airstrike on the town of Shaara… near the eastern Lebanon mountain range, killing two people and wounding two” others, said the state-run National News Agency.

Lebanese terror group Hezbollah began attacking across the border on October 8, 2023, the day after allied Palestinian terror group Hamas led a massive invasion of southern Israel in which it killed some 1,200 and took 251 hostages.

Hezbollah rocket and drone attacks forced the evacuation of 60,000 northern residents, killed dozens of people, and caused significant damage. Israel hit back with air strikes, and by September the conflict escalated into open war, during which Israel decimated Hezbollah’s leadership and stockpiles. The war ended in a late November ceasefire, which has largely held despite mutual accusations of violations.

Under the November 27 truce agreement, Israeli forces were to withdraw from southern Lebanon while Hezbollah was to remove its military infrastructure from the area. Troops remain in five points deemed “strategic” by the Israeli military.