Wednesday, the Israeli occupier launched raids on Iranian targets in Syria in what the IOF described as a response to finding explosive devices along the northern border. The raids resulted in three deaths.

In a statement, the IOF stated that it bombed "military targets of the Quds Force and the Syrian army" in Syria in strikes launched at night.

The army said in a statement on Twitter, "What Iran and Syria have done is that they planted improvised explosive devices near the Alpha Line to hit Israeli soldiers. What we did is that we have just hit targets of the Quds Force and the Syrian army in Syria."

According to IOF spokesperson Avichai Adrai, the targets struck by the Israeli occupation warplanes included "warehouses, headquarters, and military compounds, in addition to surface-to-air batteries."

Adraei said in a tweet on Twitter that the bombing was "in response to the planting of the field of explosive devices on the Golan borders inside Israeli territory by a cell that acted under Iranian direction."

He emphasized that the Hebrew state bears "the responsibility of the Syrian regime for any action that takes place from its territory, and will continue to move according to the need to strike the Iranian position in Syria, which poses a threat to regional stability."

Damascus later announced the killing of three of its soldiers and the wounding of a fourth in the Israeli occupation bombing.

The Syrian official news agency SANA quoted a military source as saying that "the Zionist enemy carried out an air aggression from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan on the southern region, and our air defenses confronted it and dropped a number of missiles."

He added, "The aggression resulted in the death of three soldiers, the wounding of one soldier, and some material losses."

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that ten people were killed, including foreign fighters and Syrian soldiers.

According to the observatory, among the foreigners are five fighters "possibly Iranians and belonging to the Quds Force," in addition to fighters loyal to Iran, but their nationalities were not specified.

- An American visit-

The Israeli occupier has launched hundreds of air and missile strikes on Syria since the outbreak of the war in its northern neighbor in 2011, and these strikes have targeted sites of the Syrian army and other sites of Iranian forces and the Lebanese Hezbollah.

The Hebrew state rarely admits to launching these raids individually, but it does so when it says it is responding to specific attacks targeting them.

The raids came hours before US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited the Israeli occupier for talks on Iran, in what appears to be his last visit to a close US ally before President Donald Trump's term ends.

Israeli occupation Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who considers Trump to be the strongest ally of the Israeli occupation in the White House, has previously praised the hard-line approach adopted by the US administration towards Iran.

Trump adopted a policy of "maximum pressure" on Iran, including re-imposing sanctions and his withdrawal from the nuclear agreement concluded between the Islamic Republic and major powers during the rule of former President Barack Obama.

Netanyahu was a fierce opponent of the policy pursued by Barack Obama between 2009 and 2017 regarding the Iran and Palestine.

Israeli experts believe that Netanyahu is concerned about the possibility of US President-elect Joe Biden establishing a diplomatic rapprochement with Iran, or re-engaging the nuclear agreement.

Biden had his first telephone conversation Tuesday since his victory with Netanyahu, as announced by the US President-elect's teams.

The president-elect said to the Israeli occupation prime minister that he is determined "to ensure that relations between the United States and Israel are strengthened and that they have strong bipartisan support" in the Democratic and Republican United States.

The president-elect's team added in a statement that Biden "reiterated his unwavering support for the security of Israel and its future as a Jewish and democratic state."

For his part, Netanyahu's office said that the prime minister had a "warm" conversation with the president-elect.

Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdul Latif Al-Zayani will arrive in the Israeli occupation Wednesday afternoon, in the first visit by a senior Bahraini official to the Jewish state since the normalization agreement was signed in mid-September.