Early on Sunday morning, Israeli missiles struck the Kafr Sousa neighbourhood of Damascus, killing five people and wounding fifteen. The attack was reported by the Syrian SANA news agency, which stated that the missiles caused damage to several civilian homes and other buildings in the area. Footage posted by state media showed a ten-storey building that had been badly damaged, with the structure of its lower floors crushed.
According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, this was the deadliest Israeli attack in the Syrian capital to date. It is not clear whether the raid was aimed at a specific individual, but the area is known to be heavily guarded and close to Iranian installations.
The attack comes more than a month after an Israeli missile strike on Damascus International Airport, which killed four people, including two soldiers. Israel has been carrying out air attacks against suspected Iranian-sponsored weapons transfers and personnel deployments in Syria for almost a decade. These raids, which have recently targeted Syrian airports and air bases, are part of an effort to slow down Iran’s growing presence in Syria, according to Israeli military experts.
Iran has expanded its military presence in Syria in recent years, with thousands of members of militias and local paramilitary groups under its command. Although President Bashar al-Assad’s government has never publicly acknowledged that Iranian forces operate on its behalf in Syria’s civil war, Western intelligence sources say that Iran’s proxy militias, led by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, now hold sway in vast areas in eastern, southern and northwestern Syria and in several suburbs around the capital.