15 killed in missile attack on Damascus attributed to Israel

Iranian-backed military sites were hit, including a radar system.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The Israeli air force allegedly struck Iranian-backed forces in Syria overnight Saturday, killing up to 15 people in and around Damascus.

The BBC cited Syrian army sources saying at least 13 people were killed and 28 wounded when several buildings were hit by missiles in and around the Syrian capital that came “from the direction of the occupied Syrian Golan.”

State mouthpiece Sana cited five deaths, including one Syrian soldier, in a building struck in the Kaf Sousa neighborhood of the capital. Quoting a military source, it added that 15 civilians had been wounded when Israel struck several areas of the capital “and its vicinity,” destroying several homes and “damage[in] a number of neighborhoods.”

The Syrian military claimed that its air defenses had “shot down most” of the Israeli missiles.

The London-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights (SOHR) reported that its activists had “documented the death of 15 people and injury of others” when Israeli missiles “hit positions where Iranian-backed militias and Lebanese Hezbollah are stationed…causing fires and explosions.”

It stated that the attacks targeted a “radar system battalion in Tel Masih” as well as “an Iranian school” in the Kafr Sousa neighborhood, which is a long-known center for Iranian activity.

In 2008, Imad Mughniyeh, Iranian proxy Hezbollah’s international operations chief, was killed by a car bomb in Kafr Sousa, in what was reportedly a joint Israeli Mossad-CIA assassination.

According to Dubai-based Al Arabiya, the neighborhood is considered “one of the most prestigious neighborhoods in the Syrian capital and contains military, intelligence and security branches.”

As per its usual custom, Israel refused to comment on the attack. Jerusalem has conducted a “war between the wars” against Iranian military entrenchment in Syria for years, hitting command and control centers, Hezbollah missile production sites, and arms convoys heading for Lebanon, among its thousands of targets.

The SOHR estimates that there are about 15,000 fighters in Syria who are backed by Iran.

This is the second alleged Israel attack in Syria in 2023. Last month, Israeli forces struck the two runways at Damascus International Airport and several buildings at the site used by pro-Iranian groups, including a weapons warehouse. The Syrians managed to get the airport running again after several hours.

Israel considers the airport a key funnel for Tehran’s smuggling of weapons in to the country, and hit it twice last year as well, in September and June. The June attack killed five Syrian soldiers and two members of Iranian-backed militias, and caused significant damage that shut the airport down for two weeks.

DamascusDamascus airportIsraeli air strikeSOHRSyria