Syrian state-run media said Israel struck the upscale Mazzeh district of Damascus on Friday, the second such attack in as many days to hit the neighbourhood home to embassies, security headquarters and United Nations offices.
Attacks blamed on or claimed by Israel have intensified in Syria, including in areas near the Lebanese border mainly targeting bastions of the Lebanese movement Hezbollah.
Israel went to war with the Iran-backed group — which is also allied with Syria — in September following nearly a year of cross-border hostilities sparked by the Gaza war.
“Israeli aggression targets Mazzeh area in Damascus,” the official SANA news agency said Friday, after reporting a deadly Israeli strike on the district a day earlier.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said the strikes targeted a “military housing complex” in Mazzeh.
“Fire trucks and ambulances headed to the targeted site amid reports of casualties, with security services and regime forces completely cordoning off the targeted site,” the Observatory said.
Israeli strikes on Thursday in and around Damascus killed 23 people, according to the Britain-based monitor, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
Thursday’s strike on Mazzeh killed 13 people, including civilians and Iran-backed fighters, while an attack on the outskirts of Damascus killed 10 Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants, the monitor said.
Islamic Jihad has fought alongside Hamas against Israeli forces in Gaza and has been at war with Israel before.
‘Hunt you down’
Israeli authorities, who rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria, claimed responsibility for Thursday’s, saying they targeted Islamic Jihad.
Israel’s army said it would strike Islamic Jihad “wherever necessary”, accusing it of operating “in Syria under the cover of the Syrian Regime” and “assisting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, with the purpose of attacking Israel”.
The attacks coincided with an official visit to Damascus on Thursday by Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Since September 23, Israel has escalated its bombing of Lebanon, later sending in ground troops following almost a year of limited exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah in support of its ally Hamas after the October 7, 2023 attack that sparked the Gaza war.
“Israel is now escalating its attacks on Syria” after the outbreak of the Lebanon war, said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Observatory, adding “they are targeting everyone who has a connection to the Iranian axis”.
Israeli strikes hit the Qusayr border area — where Hezbollah holds influence — at least 28 times since the war broke out in September, Rami said.
“Intensified Israeli raids on areas where Hezbollah and Iran-backed groups hold sway inside Syria is a message to Iran and Hezbollah: We will hunt you down everywhere,” he said.
The attacks were also a way of pressuring the Syrian government to distance itself from Tehran, he added.