Five Killed in Deadly Air Strike on Damascus Blamed on Israel
Israel neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the attack, which struck a residential neighborhood near Iranian military installations
An Israeli airstrike overnight struck a building in central Damascus’s Kafr Sousa residential neighborhood near a large, heavily fortified security complex close to Iranian military installations, killing five people and wounding 15, Syrian state news SANA reported.
SANA reported that Syrian air defenses were “confronting hostile targets in the sky around Damascus” very early on Sunday morning. The government media agency, citing a military source, reported that a soldier was among those killed, along with “destruction of a number of residential buildings.”
“It caused damage to several civilian homes and material damage to a number of neighborhoods in Damascus and its vicinity,” the Syrian military said in a statement.
“At 00:22 a.m., the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights targeting several areas in Damascus and its vicinity, including residential neighborhoods,” it said.
Syrian defense forces “shot down several missiles,” the military added in its statement.
The UK-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 15 people, including a woman, were killed on Sunday in “the deadliest Israeli attack in the Syrian capital” so far.
The rare attack on the capital reportedly damaged a 10-story building near sites connected with Iranian military forces and the Lebanese group Hizbullah, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Mohammad Marandi, professor of English Literature and Orientalism at the University of Tehran, told The Media Line that “there were no Iranians or Iranian weapons there. The Israeli regime regularly manufactures such lies in order to somehow ‘justify’ targeting Syrians.”
An Israeli military spokesperson declined to comment, saying only that “Israel does not comment on reports in foreign media.”
If the Iranians stay away from the capital, Israel won’t attack
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The Syrian Directorate-General of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) said in a statement that the “Israeli aggression caused huge damage to the Technical Institute for Applied Arts in Damascus Citadel and the Kafr Souseh Cultural Center.”
The raids were the first since a destructive earthquake hit Turkey and Syria on February 6, leaving more than 46,000 dead.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of Syria in recent years, but rarely acknowledges or discusses the operations.
Major General (res.) Yaakov Amidror, the Anne and Greg Rosshandler senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told The Media Line that standard Israeli policy does not admit responsibility for such attacks.
“In the last 10 years Israel is doing whatever is needed to destroy the Iranian efforts to build an independent Iranian force in Syria, and to use Syria for transferring weapon systems into the hands of Hizbullah in Lebanon,” he said.
“We don’t take any responsibility for it, and I think it’s very wise. Probably well understood, but not publicly,” Amidror said.
Attacks on the Damascus international airport, which is located some 20 miles east of the capital, have occurred in the past, and Amidror says the “decision” to target Damascus is forced on Israel.
“If the Iranians stay away from the capital, Israel won’t attack,” according to Amidror.
He says Israel is “relentless” in its attacks on Syria and will not stop. “Syria is suffering from the result of the earthquake and, rather than concentrating on helping the Syrians, the Iranians are using the opportunity to bring in weapons. We can’t allow this to happen,” Amidror said.
Israel has in the past admitted to targeting sites where Iranian forces are based, and Tehran’s ally in Lebanon, Hizbullah, which has sent thousands of fighters in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s army.
Iran condemned the strike on the Syrian capital, and its state news agency denied any Iranians were killed in the strike.
There’s no clear evidence to any Israeli involvement, however, the Israeli policy is to try to prevent Iranian deployment of advanced military equipment in Syria, and stop it from reaching its proxy in Lebanon, Hizbullah
Col. (res.) Dr. Shaul Shay, former deputy head of the Israel National Security Council, and director of research at the International Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at Reichman University in Herzliya, told The Media Line that in the past Israel targeted Iranian positions in Syria.
“There’s no clear evidence to any Israeli involvement, however, the Israeli policy is to try to prevent Iranian deployment of advanced military equipment in Syria, and stop it from reaching its proxy in Lebanon, Hizbullah,” according to Shay.
On Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu accused Iran of being behind a reported attack last week on an Israeli-owned oil tanker in the Gulf.
The prime minister said at the start of the weekly Cabinet meeting, that “Iran is trying relentlessly to attack the State of Israel and its citizens wherever they are in the world. Iran’s attacks will not weaken us.”
The manager of the Liberian-flagged ship, Campo Square, owned by Zodiac Maritime, which is controlled by Israeli shipping magnate Eyal Ofer, confirmed on Saturday that the tanker was lightly damaged on February 10 in an attack by a drone while sailing through the Arabian Sea.
The last reported attack on Damascus was on January 2, when the Syrian army reported that Israel’s military fired missiles toward the international airport of Syria’s capital early Monday, putting it out of service and killing two soldiers and wounding two others.
