An Israeli rocket hurled a building in the central Damascus neighborhood of Kafr Sousa near a large, heavily guarded security complex near Iranian facilities on Sunday morning, killing five people, witnesses and officials said.
The rare targeted attack damaged several buildings in the densely populated district near Omayyad Square in the heart of the capital, where multi-story security buildings sit within residential areas.
A police official told state media that there were several casualties and injuries.
An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment.
Citing a military source, state media said Israel had carried out airstrikes against several areas of the capital shortly after midnight, killing five civilians and injuring 15 and damaging several residential buildings.
“It caused damage to several civilian homes and material damage to several neighborhoods in and around Damascus,” the army said in a statement.
It was not immediately clear if the attack was directed at a specific individual.
Pro-Iranian Hezbollah’s top commander, Imad Moughniyeh, was killed in a 2008 bombing in Kafr Sousa, a heavily guarded area where residents say several Iranian security agencies, including a major cultural center, are based.
For nearly a decade, Israel has been carrying out airstrikes against alleged Iranian-sponsored arms transfers and personnel deployments in neighboring 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 local militias and paramilitary groups under its command, Western intelligence sources say.
In recent months, Israel has also intensified attacks on Syrian airports and airbases to disrupt Iran’s increasing use of supply airlines to deliver weapons to allies in Syria and Lebanon, including the US-backed Hezbollah. Iran in Lebanon.
The attacks are part of an escalation in what has been a low-intensity conflict aimed at curbing Iran’s growing entrenchment in Syria, Israeli military experts say.
Iran’s proxy militias, led by Lebanon’s Hezbollah, now control vast areas in eastern, southern and northwestern Syria and in various suburbs around the capital.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government has never publicly acknowledged that Iranian forces operate on its behalf in Syria’s civil war, saying Tehran only has military advisers on the ground.