Israeli airstrikes near Damascus kill 15, Syrian state media reports

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Israel carried out at least two airstrikes on a western neighborhood of Damascus and one of the capital’s suburbs on Thursday, killing at least 15 people and wounding another 16, Syria’s state news agency said.
The airstrikes on the Mazzeh neighborhood in Damascus and the suburb of Qudsaya, northwest of the capital, struck two buildings, the SANA news agency said. An Associated Press journalist at the scene in Mazzeh said that a five-story building was damaged by a missile that hit the basement.
The Israeli military said it had hit infrastructure sites and command centers of the Islamic Jihad militant group in Syria, and had “inflicted significant damage to the terrorist organization’s command center and to its operatives.”
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The airstrikes in Damascus and the nearby suburb came shortly before Ali Larijani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, was scheduled to meet in the Syrian capital with representatives of Palestinian factions at the Iranian Embassy in Mazzeh.
The Israeli military said Islamic Jihad had participated alongside Hamas, the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip, in the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks on southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and saw 250 others abducted into Gaza.
The military “will continue to operate against the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization wherever necessary,” it said.
Israel’s retaliation to the Oct. 7 attack and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war has spilled into the wider region, affecting Lebanon, Syria and leading to strikes between Israel and Iran. The war has left much of Gaza in ruins and has killed over 43,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to local health authorities who do not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
An official with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Group said that the strike in Mazzeh targeted one of their offices, and that several members of the group were killed. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.
Syria’s state news agency SANA said that the country’s air defenses were activated against a “hostile target” south of the central city of Homs. It gave no further details.
Tehran has been a main backer of Syrian President Bashar Assad’s government since a 2011 uprising turned into a full-blown civil war and has played an instrumental role in turning the tide of the conflict in his favor.
Iran has sent scores of military advisers and thousands of Iran-backed fighters from around the Middle East to Syria to fight on Assad’s side. Tehran has also been an economic lifeline for Assad, sending fuel and credit lines worth billions of dollars.
Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in Syria targeting members of neighboring Lebanon’s Hezbollah and officials from Iranian-backed groups.
Hezbollah began firing into Israel on Oct. 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza. Since then, more than 3,200 people have been killed in Lebanon and more than 14,200 wounded, the country’s Health Ministry reported. In Israel, 76 people have been killed, including 31 soldiers.
Lebanon’s state media said an Israeli airstrike Thursday hit a building in Baalbek city in eastern Lebanon, killing at least nine people and wounding five others.
The strike on Baalbek came without warning. The Israeli military did not immediately comment and the target was not clear.
Israeli warplanes intensified airstrikes on Thursday, targeting various areas in southern and eastern Lebanon, including the outskirts of the southern port city of Tyre city and the Nabatieh province, the National News Agency said.
Throughout the day, sporadic airstrikes targeted Beirut’s southern suburbs in a clear uptick in attacks on the area over the past two days, with the Israeli army issuing evacuation warnings for several locations and buildings in the suburbs.
The Israeli military said it carried out strikes on Hezbollah targets in the Dahiyeh area, including weapons storage facilities and command centers.
Lebanon’s Health Ministry said the death toll in Lebanon since the war began on Oct. 8, 2023 has reached 3,365 while those wounded are 14,344. Nearly 1.2 million people have been displaced.
Before the war intensified on Sept. 23, Hezbollah said that it had lost nearly 500 members but the group has stopped releasing statements about their killed fighters since.
United Nations peacekeeping chief Jean-Pierre Lacroix, speaking during a visit to Lebanon, said the U.N. remains committed to keeping its peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, in place in all of its positions in southern Lebanon, despite intense ongoing battles between Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants.
UNIFIL has continued to monitor the escalating conflict between Israel and Hezbollah across the boundary known as the Blue Line despite Israeli calls for peacekeepers to pull back five kilometers (three miles) from the border. UNIFIL has accused Israel of deliberately destroying observation equipment, and 13 peacekeepers have been injured in the fighting.
Lacroix visited some of the wounded peacekeepers during his trip.
UNIFIL forces “continue to be deployed in all the positions, and we think it is very important to preserve that presence everywhere,” LaCroix said. ”…Had we vacated some of the positions, then that would have certainly jeopardized the capacity for UNIFIL to continue today, but probably even more importantly, that would have significantly undermined the capacity for UNIFIL to play a role, tomorrow, when the cessation of hostilities takes place – hopefully sooner than later.”
Lacroix said there is still a “large consensus that resolution 1701 remains the critical framework for settlement,” referring to the U.N. Security Council resolution that ended the brutal monthlong war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006, but which has never been fully implemented by either party.
Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.