News Desk
DAMASCUS: Israeli missile strikes on the Syrian capital, Damascus in the wee hours of Sunday killed at least five people and damaged several residential buildings, according to officials and media reports.
Israel carried out the aerial raids shortly after midnight, targeting several areas in the capital, killing five civilians and injuring 15 others, and damaging several residential buildings. The Syrian SANA news agency said, quoting a military source.
“The strikes caused damage to several civilian homes and to a number of neighbourhoods in Damascus and its vicinity,” the army said in a statement.
The missile attacks early on Sunday targeted a building in the Kafr Sousa neighbourhood of central Damascus near a large, heavily guarded security complex close to Iranian installations, Reuters reported, citing witnesses.
Israeli raid in Damascus killed 15 people: war monitor
Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights – a UK-based group with a wide network of sources inside Syria – said 15 people were killed in the Israeli bombing in the Kafr Sousa.
“Sunday’s strike is the deadliest Israeli attack in the Syrian capital,” he said.
It was not immediately clear if the raids were aimed at a specific target.
Footage posted by state media showed a heavily damaged 10-storey building with a crushed lower structure. The attack had blown out several of its windows with large chunks of the building thrown into the street below, which was strewn with cladding and metal fittings.
An Israeli military spokesperson declined to comment.
The latest attack comes more than a month after an Israeli missile strike at the Damascus International Airport killed four people, including two soldiers.
For nearly a decade, Israel has been carrying out air raids at suspected Iranian military installments in neighbouring Syria. Israeli officials have rarely acknowledged responsibility for specific attacks.
