Hizbullah flag
Hizbullah flagAFP photo

Twelve members of the Hizbullah terrorist group have been killed in an ambush near Damascus, Al Arabiya reported Tuesday, quoting sources close to the Lebanese movement.

More than 20 other Hizbullah members, part of a military brigade deployed in Syria to defend President Bashar al-Assad, were also wounded in the attack, the sources said.

The wounded were transferred from Damascus to a hospital in the south of the Lebanese capital Beirut, the sources said, adding that Hizbullah is tightlipped about the issue.

On Monday, AFP reported that two Hizbullah terrorists fighting alongside Syrian government forces in the Qusayr area near the border with Lebanon were killed.

On February 16, three Shiite Lebanese trained by Hizbullah were killed in fighting in the same area, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Last July, as the ongoing civil war in Syria continued, the terror group led by Hassan Nasrallah publicly offered to place itself at Assad’s disposal.

But already several months earlier, a soldier from the Free Syrian Army told The Independent newspaper, published in the UK, that Hizbullah's Shiite Muslim terrorists are full military allies of the Syrian army and that "everyone knows they have fighters there."

Last month, the Lebanese Al-Joumhouria daily reported that Hizbullah had secretly buried in Lebanon 38 of its terrorists who were killed on Syrian territory.

U.S. and Middle Eastern officials said last week that both Iran and Hizbullah are building a network of militias inside Syria to preserve and protect their interests in the event that Assad’s government falls or is forced to retreat from Damascus.