Israel carried out at least two airstrikes on a western neighborhood of Damascus and one of the capital’s suburbs on Thursday, killing at least 15 people and wounding another 16, Syria’s state news agency said.
The news agency, SANA, said the airstrikes on the Mazzeh neighborhood in Damascus and the suburb of Qudsaya northwest of the capital struck two buildings. An Associated Press journalist at the scene in Mazzeh said that a five-story building was damaged by a missile that hit the basement.
The Israeli military said that it had hit infrastructure sites and command centers of the Islamic Jihad militant group in Syria, and had “inflicted significant damage to the terrorist organization’s command center and to its operatives.”
The airstrikes in Damascus and the nearby suburb came shortly before Ali Larijani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, was scheduled to meet in the Syrian capital with representatives of Palestinian factions at the Iranian Embassy in Mazzeh.
The Israeli military said that Islamic Jihad had participated alongside Hamas, the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip, in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel that triggered the ongoing war in the Middle East.
The military “will continue to operate against the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization wherever necessary,” it said.
An official with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Group said that the strike in Mazzeh targeted one of their offices, and that several members of the group were killed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.
SANA said that the country’s air defenses were activated against a “hostile target” south of the central city of Homs. It gave no further details.
Tehran has been a main backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government since a 2011 uprising turned into full-blown civil war and has played an instrumental role in turning the tide of the conflict in his favor.
Iran has sent scores of military advisers and thousands of Iran-backed fighters from around the Middle East to Syria to fight on Assad’s side. Tehran has also been an economic lifeline for Assad, sending fuel and credit lines worth billions of dollars.
Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria targeting members of neighboring Lebanon’s Hezbollah and officials from Iranian-backed groups.
Aji writes for the Associated Press.