According to pro-government media and officials from an Iran-backed group, a prominent Syrian businessman, Mohammed Baraa Katerji, was killed in an Israeli drone strike near the Lebanon-Syria border on Monday. Katerji had close ties to the government of Syria's President Bashar Assad and had been sanctioned by the United States.

The details of the attack indicate that Katerji was killed instantly in his SUV on the highway connecting Lebanon and Syria. An official from the Iran-backed group, who spoke on condition of anonymity, confirmed the incident. The pro-Syrian government newspaper Al-Watan referred to the strike as a "Zionist drone strike on his car."

Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, stated that there was no independent confirmation of Katerji's death. However, it is believed that Katerji may have been targeted because of his involvement in financing the Syrian resistance against Israel in the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights and his connections to Iran-backed groups in Syria.

In 2018, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned Katerji for allegedly trading oil with the Islamic State group on behalf of Assad and facilitating weapons shipments from Iraq to Syria.

Israel has been carrying out regular strikes in Syria on targets linked to its powerful regional backer, Iran. However, these strikes are rarely acknowledged by Israel. The frequency of these attacks has increased in recent months amid the war in Gaza and ongoing clashes between Israeli forces and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah on the Lebanon-Israel border.

This latest development adds to the escalating violence in the region, highlighting the complex web of alliances and conflicting interests. The consequences of these events on the already tense situation in the Middle East remain to be seen.