Deadly air strike on Kafr Sousa suburb of Damascus

An Israeli airstrike reportedly has killed up to 15 people in Kafr Sousa – a high-security area of the Syrian capital, Damascus, part of which is home to senior security officials, security branches and intelligence headquarters and Iranian installations.

The rare, targeted strike damaged several buildings in the densely populated district close to Omayyad square in the heart of the capital, where multi-storey security buildings are located within residential areas.

An Israeli military spokesperson declined to comment.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike, which hit close to an Iranian cultural centre, had killed 15 people including civilians. Syria’s defence ministry said the strike killed, in a preliminary toll, five people, among them a soldier, and injured 15 civilians, some in critical condition.

It was not immediately clear whether the strike was aimed at a specific individual.

Pro-Iran Hezbollah’s top commander Imad Moughniyeh was killed in 2008 in a bombing in Kafr Sousa, a heavily policed area where residents say several Iranian security agencies are located, including a major cultural centre.

For almost a decade, Israel has been carrying out airstrikes against suspected Iranian-sponsored weapons transfers and personnel deployments in neighbouring Syria. Israeli officials have rarely acknowledged responsibility for specific operations.

Iran has expanded its military presence in Syria in recent years and has a foothold in most state-controlled areas, with thousands of members of militias and local paramilitary groups under its command, western intelligence sources say.

Israel has also in recent months intensified strikes on Syrian airports and airbases to disrupt Iran’s increasing use of aerial supply lines to deliver arms to allies in Syria and Lebanon, including Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah.

The strikes are part of an escalation of what has been a low-intensity conflict whose goal was to slow down Iran’s growing entrenchment in Syria, Israeli military experts say.

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.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government has never publicly acknowledged that Iranian forces operate on his behalf in Syria’s civil war, saying Tehran has only military advisers on the ground.

With Agence France-Presse and Reuters