DAMASCUS: Air strikes and artillery fire killed at least 15 civilians on Tuesday in a besieged rebel enclave near Damascus targeted by near-daily regime bombardment, a war monitor said.

Three children were among the dead in Eastern Ghouta, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which said the air raids were carried out by regime and Russian warplanes.

The deadliest strikes hit the Hammuriyeh district where eight civilians were killed, the Britain-based monitor said.

“There are 85 wounded in total, some in critical condition, and the death toll could increase,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

The monitor relies on a network of sources inside Syria and says it determines whose planes carry out raids according to type, location, flight patterns and munitions used.

Eastern Ghouta has been under government siege since 2013 and its estimated 400,000 inhabitants are suffering severe shortages of food and medicine.

It is one of the last remaining opposition strongholds in Syria, where more than 340,000 people have been killed across the country in nearly seven years of war.

Eastern Ghouta was one of four “de-escalation zones” agreed under a deal between rebel and regime backers but the opposition stronghold remains the target of intense regime air strikes.

Israeli jets and ground-to-ground missiles struck Syria early on Tuesday, Syria’s army said, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated he would do what was needed to stop Hizbollah gaining “game-changing” Iranian weapons.

The Syrian army said in a statement carried by state television that Israeli jets fired missiles at the Al Qutaifa area near Damascus from inside Lebanese airspace at 2:40am and Syrian air defences hit one of the planes.

Israel then fired rockets from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, but the Syrian defences brought them down, the army said, adding that Israeli jets fired a final barrage of four rockets from inside Israel, one of which was intercepted by Syrian air defences while the others caused material damage.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in answer to a reporter’s question about the strikes that Israel’s policy was to stop Hezbollah moving “game-changing weapons” out of Syria.

“We back it up as necessary with action,” he said, without explicitly confirming Israel carried out Tuesday’s strikes.

In its statement, the Syrian army repeated previous warnings of serious repercussions for the strikes and repeated its past accusation that Israel was using attacks to support militant groups in Syria.

Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Tuesday the Syrian army was striking moderate opposition forces in Idlib province and this was undermining efforts to reach a political solution to the war in Syria.

Turkey has been fiercely opposed to Syrian President Bashar Al Assad during his country’s six-year-old civil war but has recently been working with his allies Russia and Iran for a political resolution to the conflict.

The three countries agreed last year to establish a “de-escalation zone” in the opposition-held Idlib province and surrounding region, which borders Turkey, but Syrian forces have since launched an offensive in the area.

“Regime forces are hitting the moderate opposition with the excuse that they are fighting Nusra (hardliner militants). This attitude scuppers the political solution process,” state-run Anadolu news agency quoted Cavusoglu as telling reporters.

“The groups who will come together in Sochi should not do this,” he said, referring to the Russian city where a Syrian congress of national dialogue is set to be held at the end of this month.

Russia has enough forces remaining in Syria to withstand possible attacks on its bases, a Kremlin spokesman said on Tuesday.

“That contingent that remains, the military infrastructure that remains, at the Hmeimim and Tartus military bases, they are completely capable of fighting these occasional terrorist acts,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a conference call.

The Russian Defence Ministry said on Monday that militants had attacked its bases overnight on Jan.6 using thirteen armed drones.