DAMASCUS:
An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in the Kafr Sousa district of the Syrian capital Damascus on Wednesday, killing two people, Syrian state media and a security source said.
A military source cited by Syrian state television said the strike at about 9:40 a.m. (0640 GMT) injured several other people, saying the dead are civilians.
Images published by Syrian state media showed the charred side of a high-rise building. The security source said the “attack did not achieve its objectives”.
The neighborhood is home to residential buildings, schools and Iranian cultural centers and is close to a large, heavily guarded compound used by security services. The area was hit by an Israeli attack in February 2023 that killed Iranian military experts.
Eyewitnesses heard several explosions back to back. The explosions startled children at a nearby school and ambulances rushed to the area, witnesses said. Reuters.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
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The semi-official Iran Student News Network reported that no Iranian citizens were killed in the attack.
On Wednesday afternoon, a Reuters witness heard another big explosion in the capital that shook the windows of the houses. Local Syrian news agency Sham FM reported that several explosions were heard in the capital without specifying the cause.
Iran has been a key backer of President Bashar al-Assad during the nearly 12-year conflict in Syria. Its support for Damascus and the Lebanese Hezbollah group has prompted regular Israeli airstrikes aimed at curbing Tehran’s extraterritorial military power.
These strikes have increased in line with the rise in regional tensions since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, with more than half a dozen Iranian Revolutionary Guard officers killed in suspected Israeli strikes in Syria since December.
As a result, the Guards have scaled back the deployment of their senior officers to Syria and planned to rely more heavily on allied Shiite militias to maintain their dominance there, sources familiar with the matter said. Reuters earlier this month.
Iran, a backer of Hamas, has sought to stay out of the conflict, even though it supports groups that have entered the fray from Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria – the so-called “Axis of Resistance” hostile to Israel and US interests.
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