An Israeli airstrike in Syria early yesterday killed 15 people and badly damaged a building in a Damascus district that is home to several state security agencies, a war monitoring group said.
Civilians, including two women, were among those killed in “the deadliest Israeli attack in the Syrian capital” so far, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The overnight strike damaged a 10-story building near an Iranian cultural center in the capital’s Kafr Sousa neighborhood, which is home to senior state officials and Syrian intelligence headquarters, the Observatory said.
Photo: Reuters
It was not immediately clear who was the intended target of the strike, which Agence France-Presse correspondents reported left a large crater in the rubble-strewn street below and blew out windows of nearby buildings.
Other missiles overnight hit a warehouse that belongs to pro-regime Iranian and Hezbollah fighters near Damascus, said the Observatory, which relies on a wide network of sources inside Syria.
The Syrian Ministry of Defense confirmed the Kafr Sousa attack shortly after midnight, and gave an initial death toll of five, including one soldier, and 15 wounded civilians, some of whom it said were in a critical condition.
“At 00:22am, the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights targeting several areas in Damascus and its vicinity, including residential neighborhoods,” it said.
Syrian defense forces had “shot down several missiles,” the ministry said.
“Israel does no comment on reports in foreign media,” an Israeli army spokesperson said yesterday.
Israel, during more than a decade of war in Syria, has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against its neighbor, primarily targeting the country’s army, Iranian forces and Hezbollah, allies of the Damascus regime.
Israel’s military rarely comments on its operations inside Syria, but regularly asserts that it would not let its archenemy Iran extend its influence to Israel’s borders.
Late last year, Major General Oded Basiuk, head of the Israel Defense Forces Operations Directorate, presenting an operational outlook for 2023, said that the army “will not accept Hezbollah 2.0 in Syria.”
Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Nasser Kanani yesterday “strongly condemned the attacks of the Zionist regime against targets in Damascus and its suburbs, including against certain residential buildings.”
The raids had left “a number of innocent Syrian citizens” dead and injured, he said.
The Syrian conflict started in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful protests, and escalated to pull in multiple foreign powers and global militants.
Nearly 500,000 people have been killed, and the conflict has forced about half of the country’s pre-war population from their homes.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime receives military support from Russia, as well as from Iran and Tehran-allied armed Shiite groups, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which are declared enemies of Israel.
The latest attack comes more than a month after an Israeli missile strike hit Damascus International Airport, killing four people, including two soldiers.
The Jan. 2 strike hit positions of Hezbollah and pro-Iranian groups inside the airport and nearby, including a weapons warehouse, the Observatory said at the time.
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