ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A suspected Israeli airstrike hit the Syrian capital Damascus on Wednesday, killing three people and injuring several others, state media reported. “At 5:25 pm today, the Israeli occupation launched an air aggression, targeting a residential building in the Mazzeh neighborhood in Damascus,” SANA cited an unnamed military source as saying, adding that three civilians were killed and three others were injured in addition to material damage to the area. Two of the dead were not Syrian citizens, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), which relies on a network of sources within Syria. The UK-based war monitor said that the “Israeli strike” hit the first floor of a three-storey building “frequented” by leaders of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). It put the number of the wounded at four. Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on regime-controlled areas of Syria throughout its over a decade-long civil war, often claiming to target pro-Iran militias, such as Hezbollah, which supports the Syrian army. Israel rarely confirms strikes attributed to it in Syria but has repeatedly warned that it would not tolerate its arch-rival Iran gaining a foothold there. The strikes have increased since October 7 last year, when Palestinian Hamas militants launched an unprecedented, large-scale attack on Israeli territory that prompted a massive retaliation.
