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Syria reports Israeli strikes in Damascus area

The strikes caused damage but no injuries, according to official Syrian media.

Explosions in Damascus destroy an arms depot belonging to Iranian-backed groups, Aug. 13, 2023. Credit: Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Explosions in Damascus destroy an arms depot belonging to Iranian-backed groups, Aug. 13, 2023. Credit: Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Israel carried out airstrikes on Wednesday night near Damascus, Syrian state-run media reported.

The strikes, which occurred at around 9:35 p.m., targeted “a number of points in the Damascus countryside,” causing damage but no injuries, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency.

The Hezbollah-affiliated Al Maydeen network reported an explosion in the Sayeda Zainab neighborhood of the Syrian capital, where Iran-backed terrorists maintain several underground bases.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor based in the United Kingdom, said the strikes targeted “sites where Iran-backed groups including Lebanon’s Hezbollah are based.”

Meanwhile, Syrian media reported on Thursday that a drone strike on a vehicle in the country’s west killed at least one person. The alleged attack occurred in the municipality of Al-Nahriyah in the Qusayr countryside on the Lebanese border.

On Sunday, two Hezbollah terrorists were killed in an Israeli Air Force strike in Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory.

The strike reportedly targeted a truck near the Lebanese border, in an area overlapping the governorates of Homs and the Damascus countryside.

According to Hezbollah, 214 of its members have been killed since the start of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7.

At the start of February, the IDF said that it had attacked more than 50 targets belonging to Hezbollah and other Iran-backed terrorist groups in Syria since Oct. 7.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Tehran had removed senior officers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from Syria following a series of deadly strikes attributed to Israel.

Israel has allegedly struck hundreds of targets in Syria in recent years as part of an effort to prevent further Iranian military entrenchment in the country. However, Jerusalem rarely acknowledges such attacks.

However, an Iranian official said the chances of a memorandum being signed in the next 24 hours are slim.
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