Syrian state news says airstrikes from Israel that hit a neighborhood in Syria’s capital of Damascus known to have heavily guarded Iranian installations have killed at least five people.
Syrian state media agency SANA reported, citing a military source, that Israel had carried out airstrikes targeting several areas in Syria’s capital shortly after midnight on Feb. 19.
Loud explosions were heard in the capital around 12:30 a.m. local time.
The strike hit central Damascus’s densely populated neighborhood of Kafr Sousa, a heavily guarded area where residents say several Iranian security agencies are located, including a major cultural center. The neighborhood was where pro-Iran Hezbollah’s top commander Imad Mughniyeh was killed in a 2008 bombing.
At least five people were killed, with a soldier among the dead, SANA reported, citing a military source. At least another 15 people, all civilians, were wounded, several of whom were listed in critical condition. The source said that the missile came from the direction of Golan Heights.
Footage posted by state media showed a 10-story building badly damaged, with its lower floor structures crushed, per Arab News.
The rocket strike “caused damage to several civilian homes and material damage to a number of neighborhoods in Damascus and its vicinity,” the Syrian army said in a statement.
Syrian air defenses were “confronting hostile targets in the sky around Damascus,” according to SANA.
Israel has, for almost a decade, been carrying out hundreds of air strikes in state-controlled parts of Syria. But Israeli officials rarely take responsibility for or discuss specific operations.
Israeli airstrikes often target sites in the vicinity of Damascus. Tel Aviv says targeted strikes in Syria are part of efforts to resist the Iranian regime’s foreign interference in Syria. Iran’s proxy militias, led by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, now have influence in areas in eastern, southern, and northwestern Syria, and in several suburbs around Damascus.
Israel has acknowledged that it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups, which have sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. His government has never publicly acknowledged that Iranian forces operate on his behalf in Syria’s civil war, saying Iran has only military advisers on the ground.
Israel has in recent months intensified strikes on Syrian airports and air bases to disrupt suspected efforts by the Iranian regime to funnel weapons into Syria.
