Syria says Israeli strike in Damascus killed civilians

Syria’s foreign ministry has condemned a suspected Israeli air strike on an apartment building in Damascus that, it says, killed seven civilians.

The ministry said women and children were among the dead from Tuesday evening’s attack on the Mezzeh neighbourhood, which houses the Iranian embassy and other diplomatic facilities. Israel’s military has not commented.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 13, including nine civilians and two members of the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which is a key ally of Iran and Syria’s government.

The UK-based monitoring group said the strike targeted an apartment frequented by leaders of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”.

Syria’s state news agency, Sana, cited a military source as saying that the building was hit by three missiles launched by Israeli aircraft from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights.

Photographs from the scene showed emergency services personnel inspecting significant damage to apartments on the first, second and third floors.

“I was on my way home when the explosion happened and communications and electricity were cut off so I could no longer contact my family,” electrician Adel Habib, 61, who lives in the building, told AFP news agency.

“These were the longest five minutes of my life until I heard the voices of my wife, children and grandchildren.”

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights identified the civilians killed as a Yemeni doctor, his wife and their three children, as well as a woman and her child, a female doctor and a man.

Iran’s embassy said no Iranian citizens were among the casualties.

On Wednesday, one member of the Syrian security forces was killed in an Israeli strike near the south-western city of Quneitra, according to Sana.

Last week, another Israeli strike in Mezzeh reportedly killed the son-in-law of the late Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Hassan Jaafar Qassir.

Israel has previously acknowledged carrying out hundreds of strikes in recent years on targets in Syria that it says are linked to Iran and allied armed groups like Hezbollah.

The Israeli strikes in Syria have reportedly been more frequent since the start of the war in Gaza last October, in response to cross-border attacks on northern Israel by Hezbollah and other groups in Lebanon and Syria.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Israeli air and artillery strikes have targeted Syrian territory on 104 occasions since January, killing at least 296 people and resulting in the damage or destruction of about 190 targets, including weapons depots, vehicles and Iran-backed militia headquarters.

Over the past three weeks, Israel has also gone on the offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon, launching an intense and wide-ranging air campaign targeting the group’s infrastructure and weapons, and invading the south of the country.