The Israeli Air Force carried out a strike late Saturday night targeting a residential neighborhood in Damascus, killing five people and leaving 15 others hurt, Syria’s state news agency SANA reported.
There was no comment from the Israel Defense Forces, in line with its policy of not generally commenting on air raids in the country.
SANA, citing a military source, said four civilians and one soldier were killed, and another 15 civilians were wounded in the strike on the Kafar Sousah neighborhood in the Syrian capital. It said several of those wounded were listed in critical condition.
Some unconfirmed Syrian media reports put the death toll higher.
The airstrike also inflicted heavy damage to a number of residential buildings in Kafar Sousah, SANA said.
Images and video from the Damascus neighborhood showed heavy damage to several buildings.
SANA claimed Syrian air defenses managed to intercept “most” of the missiles launched by IAF jets from over the Golan Heights in the strike. Syria regularly claims to intercept Israeli missiles, though military analysts doubt such assertions.
Footage from northern Israel appeared to show a Syrian air defense missile exploding over the Golan Heights.
Orient News, a Syrian opposition media outlet claimed the strikes targeted Iranian militia officials at the so-called Iranian school in Kafar Sousah.
Separately, the Israeli jets targeted Iranian and Syrian regime military sites near the Damascus International Airport, as well as in Sitt Zaynab and al-Kiswah, a town and a city just south of the capital, Orient News said.
The outlet also claimed the damage to the residential buildings in Kafar Sousah was caused by a misfired Syrian anti-aircraft missile.
Last week, the Saudi-owned Elaph news site cited an Israeli military official as saying if Iran ships weapons to its regional proxies under the guise of humanitarian aid to Syria following the major earthquake there, the IDF would not hesitate to strike.
The unnamed official said “there is information indicating that Iran will take advantage of the tragic situation in Syria” and ship weapons to Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups in Syria.
Several Iranian cargo planes carrying aid have landed in Syria since a major earthquake struck the country and areas in southeast Turkey on February 6.
Generally, relatively large weapons are thought to be smuggled via Syria on Iranian cargo airlines, which frequently land at Damascus International and the Tiyas, or T-4, airbase, outside of the central Syrian city of Palmyra.
The weaponry is then believed to be stored in warehouses in the area before being transported to Lebanon.
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