On Wednesday, Syrian state media conveyed that a residential building in the Kafr Sousa district of Damascus, Syria’s capital, was struck by a number of Israeli missiles. The Kafr Sousa neighborhood encompasses residential structures, educational institutions, and Iranian cultural centers. Positioned in close proximity to a substantial and heavily fortified complex utilized by security agencies, the area had previously been subjected to an Israeli assault in February 2023, resulting in the loss of Iranian military experts’ lives. The attack caused a fire to erupt in the targeted building and shattered windows in nearby buildings. According to the state news agency SANA, it also damaged a bus for the nearby Al-Bawader Private School, which was full of parents rushing to collect their children. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, confirmed the airstrikes.
Iran blamed Israel for the attack, calling it an “escalation in aggressive and provocative attacks” against its forces in Syria. The IRGC, which is the paramilitary branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard, has sent thousands of fighters to help the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad fight back rebels who once nearly encircled the city.
The southwestern outskirts of the Syrian capital have become a hub for Iranian weapons transfers and personnel deployments, with Hezbollah and other allied Shiite militias taking advantage of Assad’s growing strength to consolidate their control across much of Syria. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside Syria in recent years, though it rarely acknowledges them.
An Israeli official said the latest strikes were a response to “the continued transfer of Iranian arms to terrorist organizations in Syria, including Hezbollah.” The official was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman defended the operation, saying it was based on intelligence and “the ongoing transfer of Iranian arms to Hezbollah and the Iranians themselves, which are trying to build up their forces.”
Israel is continuing to hit Tehran-linked facilities in Syria. The latest attack is the third this week, including an airstrike on Saturday that killed two people in the western Damascus neighborhood of Mazzeh. Iran blamed the raid on Israel and said it reserved the right to respond.
Rami Abdurrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group that has a network of sources in Syria, said the latest airstrikes targeted a building belonging to a Hezbollah military headquarters. “This is the deadliest attack that Israel has ever carried out in a Damascus neighborhood,” he said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented 13 attacks attributed to Israel in the first two months of this year, and it has cataloged more than half a million casualties since the conflict began with the repression of peaceful protests in 2011. It has pulled in multiple foreign powers and global jihadists and killed around half of Syria’s pre-war population.
The conflict has sparked a wave of mass displacement, with more than 11 million people having been forced to flee their homes.
