Israeli raid on outskirts of Damascus kills two
Two people were killed and several wounded on Monday in an Israeli attack on the outskirts of the Syrian capital, with Iran’s ambassador to Damascus denying reports the location was an Iranian military post.
An Israeli military spokesperson declined to comment on the explosions, Reuters reported.
Tasnim news agency said Israel “attacked an Iranian military advisory center” in Syria, but Iran’s envoy to Syria, Hossein Akbari, denied the details on the target and said the casualties were not Iranian.
“Today’s attack by the Zionist regime’s fighter jets on the southern outskirts of Damascus did not target any advisory center of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and no Iranian citizens or advisors were martyred,” he said.
“The indiscriminate attacks of the Zionists will not disrupt the resolve of the Axis of Resistance,” Akbari added.
Syrian state media, citing a military source, said Israel had launched an air assault on several locations south of Damascus. It said the attack left both dead and wounded but did not specify any numbers.
In a first version of the story on its site, Syrian news agency SANA said the dead included an unspecified number of “Iranian advisers” – a rare admission of Iranian casualties by Damascus – but the site was updated to remove the reference.
Syrian media said the strikes targeted an area near the Sayeda Zeinab shrine in a southern suburb of Damascus on Monday.
The Syrian Defense Ministry confirmed in a short statement the reports of the Israeli regime’s strikes and said, “In the Zionist regime’s aggression, some places in the south of Damascus were targeted, which led to the martyrdom and wounding of several civilians.”
SANA reported that the airstrike was launched from the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and targeted several locations in southern Damascus.
Syrian sources said the Monday attack was a failed attempt by the Israeli regime to assassinate more members of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) in that area.
Seyyed Razi Mousavi, who was serving as an IRGC military advisor in Syria, was killed in an Israeli airstrike in the same neighborhood of Damascus last month.
Mousavi was one of the companions of Iran’s top anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of the IRGC, who was assassinated along with his companions in a US drone strike on January 3, 2020.