Citing a military source, SANA reported that at around 1 pm on Monday, Israel “launched an aerial act of aggression from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan, targeting a number of points in southern Damascus.”
The airstrike left several civilians dead and injured, and caused material damage according to SANA.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based war monitor, reported that the attack targeted the Sayyida Zeinab area in southern Damascus, adding that the Syrian regime’s air defense attempted to thwart the strike but failed.
According to SOHR, seven individuals were killed in the attack, including a Syrian national who was escorting a commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
Iran’s Ambassador to Syria, Hossein Akbari said on X that no Iranian advisor or citizen was injured in the attack.
“Today's Zionist aggression against the south of the city of Damascus did not target any advisory center affiliated with the Islamic Republic of Iran, and no Iranian citizens or advisors were injured during the aggression. The blind Zionist attacks will not affect the resolve of the axis of resistance,” Akbari said.
The attack comes days after four IRGC members, including two senior military advisors to Syria, were killed in an Israeli attack on a four-story building in Damascus. A meeting of “leaders close to Iran” was taking place inside the building at the time of the attack.
While it rarely comments on strikes attributed to it in Syria, Israel has repeatedly warned that it would not tolerate its arch-rival Iran gaining a foothold there.
Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on regime-controlled areas of Syria throughout its 12-year civil war, often claiming to strike pro-Iran militias such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah group that supports the Syrian army.
The strikes have not only targeted Hezbollah or other Iran-backed militia positions in Syria. On December 28, an air defense base and anti-aircraft defense system were hit, posing a threat to key infrastructure in regime-controlled areas of Syria.
The airports in Aleppo and Damascus have previously been put out of service by suspected Israeli strikes. US bases in Syria and Iraq have come under attack by Iran-backed Iraqi militia groups since October 17 over Washington’s support of Israel in its war on the Gaza Strip.
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