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<\/div>\nIsrael rarely comments on individual strikes targeting Syria<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Beirut: <\/b><\/p>\n
An Israeli strike on Damascus killed five people in a building where “Iran-aligned leaders” were meeting on Saturday, a war monitor said, as regional tensions soar over the Israel-Hamas war.<\/p>\n
“An Israeli missile strike targeted a four-storey building, killing five people… and destroying the whole building where Iran-aligned leaders were meeting,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.<\/p>\n
The British-based monitor with a network of sources inside Syria said the targeted neighbourhood is known to be a high-security zone home to leaders of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and pro-Iran Palestinian factions.<\/p>\n
“They were for sure targeting senior members” of those groups, said Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman.<\/p>\n
The mid-morning strike, which caused a large plume of smoke to billow into the sky, was also reported by Syrian state media.<\/p>\n
“An attack targeted a residential building in the Mazzeh neighbourhood in Damascus, resulting from an Israeli aggression,” the official SANA news agency reported. It did not say if there were any casualties.<\/p>\n
An AFP correspondent at the scene said the destroyed building was cordoned off with ambulances, firefighters and Syrian Arab Red Crescent rescue teams all present at the site.<\/p>\n
Civil defence were busy searching for survivors under the rubble of the totally collapsed building, he said.<\/p>\n
The Mazzeh area is also home to the United Nations’ headquarters, embassies and restaurants.<\/p>\n
“I heard the explosion clearly in the western Mazzeh area, and I saw a large cloud of smoke,” a resident told AFP.<\/p>\n
“The sound was similar to a missile explosion, and minutes later I heard the sound of ambulances,” he added.<\/p>\n
Hundreds of Israeli strikes<\/h2>\n
During more than a decade of civil war in Syria, Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its territory, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces as well as Syrian army positions.<\/p>\n
But it has intensified attacks since the war between Israel and Hamas, which like Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement is an ally of Iran, began on October 7.<\/p>\n
In December, an Israeli air strike killed a senior general with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, the military force said.<\/p>\n
Razi Moussavi was the most senior commander of the Guards’ foreign operations arm, the Quds Force, to be killed outside Iran since a US drone strike in Baghdad on January 3, 2020 killed the Force’s commander, Qasem Soleimani.<\/p>\n
In the same month, air strikes in eastern Syria, “likely” carried out by Israel, killed at least 23 pro-Iran fighters, the Observatory said at the time, reporting four more dead in the country’s north.<\/p>\n
Recent months have also seen regular cross-border exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.<\/p>\n
Israel rarely comments on individual strikes targeting Syria, but it has repeatedly said it will not allow arch foe Iran, which backs President Bashar al-Assad’s government, to expand its presence there.<\/p>\n
Since 2011, Syria has endured a bloody conflict that has claimed over half a million lives and displaced several million people and plunged.<\/p>\n
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n<\/div>\n