2024-02-10 07:50:03
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Several Israeli airstrikes hit the outskirts of the Syrian capital, Damascus, the Syrian military said Saturday.
The attacks came from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Syrian state news agency SANA reported, citing an unidentified military officer. The projectiles that were not shot down by the anti-aircraft defenses caused “some material damage,” he added. It was not immediately clear if there were any casualties.
Israel did not comment on the matter.
The offensive came at a time of rising tension in the Middle East due to the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and a drone strike that killed three US soldiers at a base in northwestern Jordan, near the border with Syria.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that monitors the war, said one of the strikes hit a residential building west of the capital and may have killed “non-Syrian figures,” but it did not. offered more details. Saturday’s operation was the 10th apparently Israeli operation in Syrian territory so far this year, he added.
In the past, suspected Israeli attacks in Syria have claimed the lives of senior officials in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and allied groups. In December, an operation against a Damascus neighborhood killed a prominent Iranian general, Seyed Razi Mousavi, who for many years served as an adviser to Tehran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria.
Tensions have also flared in other parts of the region. A US airstrike in Baghdad on Wednesday killed a commander of Kataib Hezbollah, one of Iraq’s most powerful armed groups, as part of Washington’s response to the killing of its soldiers in Jordan last month.
Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a group encompassing Iranian-backed militias that has carried out numerous attacks on U.S. troops in both countries, called Friday for fighters to join its ranks to expel the “occupying forces.” “.
The group has carried out some 170 attacks against bases with a US presence in Iraq and Syria in the last four months, claiming that they were due to Washington’s support for Israel in its war in Gaza and that its objective is to remove troops from the region.
Last month, officials from Iraq and the United States began formal talks to reduce the presence of Washington-led coalition forces in the country, but contacts were suspended after the deaths of soldiers in Jordan in an attack attributed to the Islamic Resistance. in Iraq. Both sides announced on Thursday that the dialogue will resume on Sunday.
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Zeyad reported from Baghdad, Iraq. Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut, Lebanon, contributed to this report.
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