BEIRUT (AFP) — Israeli airstrikes targeted a residential neighborhood in the Syrian capital of Damascus early Sunday, killing at least five people and wounding 15, Syrian state news reported.
Loud explosions were heard over a central area of the capital around 12:
30 a.m. local time, and SANA reported that Syrian air defenses were “confronting hostile targets in the sky around Damascus.”
Syrian state media agency SANA, citing a military source, reported that five people had been killed, among them a soldier, and 15 civilians wounded, along with “destruction of a number of residential buildings.” The news agency also reported that the strikes had damaged buildings connected to a medieval citadel in central Damascus and an applied arts institute housed there.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, reported that 15 people, including a woman, were killed in strikes targeting sites connected with Iranian militias and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. They took place in the Damascus countryside and on an Iranian school in the neighborhood of Kafr Sousa in the capital, it said.
Samer Abdo, an engineer living in an apartment building that was struck in Kafr Sousa on an upscale residential street, was picking through shattered glass and broken wood in his apartment Sunday morning. Abdo told the Associated Press news agency that his family woke up in fear when the building shook.
Archaeological Museum Director Mohammad Awad told his Associated Press news agency that the damaged buildings around the Damascus citadel are arts and cultural institutions and administrative offices of the citadel.
There was no immediate statement from Israel regarding the attack. A spokesman for the Israeli military declined to comment.
Officials at the Iran-backed group denied media reports that the Kafr Sousa attack was aimed at Iranian or Palestinian officials. The strike hit a parking lot under the building and killed 10 civilians and soldiers, all of them Syrians, he said. Denied.
The officer spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Israeli airstrikes often target the suburbs of Damascus, but rarely residential areas within the city. Saturday night’s strike was the first since the devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on February 27. 6.
The Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has condemned the attack, which occurred “when Syria was healing its wounds, burying its martyrs, receiving condolences, compassion and international humanitarian assistance in the face of a devastating earthquake.” called on the UN Security Council to condemn him.
The last reported attack on Damascus was on January 2, when Israeli forces fired rockets at the Syrian capital’s international airport in the early hours of Monday morning, rendering it inoperable. He reported that two soldiers were killed and two of his others were wounded.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes against government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, but its operations are rarely acknowledged or discussed. But Israel is targeting bases of militant groups allied with Iran, including Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces. I admit it.
The Israeli attack comes within the broader shadow war between Israel and Iran. The attacks on Damascus and Aleppo airports ignored concerns that they were being used to smuggle Iranian weapons into the country.
Although he did not directly mention the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a ministerial meeting on Sunday that Israel will continue to defend itself against what it sees as an Iranian aggression.
