Israeli Strike Hits Residential Building in Damascus

From the source of Syrian state media reported that a suspected Israeli strike has hit a residential building in Damascus, with initial reports suggesting it killed several people. The attack took place in the Mazzeh neighbourhood in the west of the Syrian capital on Saturday, it added. The neighbourhood is home to several diplomatic missions, including the Lebanese and Iranian embassies.

A well-informed source told Al Jazeera the target was an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence unit, adding that a senior IRGC intelligence official in Syria and his assistants were in the building.

In this time the attack killed five people in a building where “Iran-aligned leaders” were meeting, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based organisation that relies on a network of sources on the ground.

“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. Syrian state TV reported that “Israeli aggression” targeted the building.

On the other hand Reuters reported that of this attack a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guards killed and wounded others. A security source in the regional pro-Syria alliance told Reuters.

The security source, part of a network of groups close to Syria's government and its major ally Iran, said the multi-storey building was used by Iranian advisers supporting President Bashar al-Assad's government, and that it was entirely flattened by "precision-targeted Israeli missiles".

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

Essam Al-Amin, head of the Al-Mowasat Hospital in Damascus, told local Syrian outlet Al-Watan Online that his hospital had received one corpse and three wounded people, including a woman, following Saturday's attack. A spokesman for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad told Reuters that no members of their group were wounded in the strike, following reports that some were at the bombed-out building.

Meanwhile Al Jazeerareported that the strike comes amid widening tensions in the region and the Israeli offensive on Gaza that has killed nearly 25,000 people. Last month, an Israeli air attack on a suburb of Damascus killed Iranian general Sayyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years, including against Palestinian and Lebanese operatives.

Israel rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, but it has said that it targets bases of Iran-allied groups, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

Earlier this month, an attack said to be carried out by Israel killed top Hamas commander Saleh al-Arouri in Lebanon’s capital, Beirut. Over the past weeks, rockets have been fired from Syria into northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, adding to tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border and attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi rebels.

Al Jazeera, Reuters