An Israeli missile strike early Sunday killed 15 people and destroyed a building in a Damascus neighbourhood that houses much of Syria’s security apparatus, a war monitor said. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the strike, which hit near an Iranian cultural centre, killed 15 people, including civilians.
Since the beginning of the Syrian war in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes against its neighbour, primarily targeting Syrian army positions, Iranian forces and Lebanon’s Hezbollah—all allies of the Syrian regime. However, it rarely hits residential areas of the capital. Sunday’s attack struck Kafr Sousa, an area home to senior officials, security agencies and intelligence headquarters.
“At 00:22 am (2222 GMT), 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 neighbourhoods,” Syria’s defence ministry said in a statement. In a preliminary toll, the ministry reported five deaths, among them a soldier, and 15 civilians injured, some in critical condition. Footage posted by state media showed a 10‑storey building badly damaged, with the lower floors crushed.
“The strike on Sunday is the deadliest Israeli attack in the Syrian capital,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain‑based Observatory, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria. The attack follows more than a month after an Israeli missile strike hit Damascus International Airport, killing four people, including two soldiers. The January 2 strike targeted “positions for Hezbollah and pro‑Iranian groups inside the airport and its surroundings, including a weapons warehouse,” the Observatory noted at the time.
Israel’s military rarely comments on its strikes against Syria, but it regularly asserts that it will not allow Iran to extend its influence to Israel’s borders. At the end of last year, Major General Oded Basiuk, head of the Israel Defence Forces Operations Directorate, presented the military’s “operational outlook” for 2023, stating that the force “will not accept Hezbollah 2.0 in Syria.”
The latest strike comes as the Damascus government seeks to recover from the February 6 earthquake, which did not affect the capital but has killed more than 43,000 people in the country’s north and in southern Turkey.
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