DAMASCUS, Syria — Israel carried out at least two airstrikes on a western neighborhood of Damascus and one of the capital’s suburbs on Thursday, killing at least 15 people and wounding another 16, Syria’s state news agency said. The airstrikes on the Mazzeh neighborhood in Damascus and the suburb of Qudsaya, northwest of the capital, struck two buildings, the SANA news agency said. An Associated Press journalist at the scene in Mazzeh said that a five-story building was damaged by a missile that hit the basement.
The Israeli military said it had hit infrastructure sites and command centers of the Islamic Jihad militant group in Syria, and had “inflicted significant damage to the terrorist organization’s command center and to its operatives.” The airstrikes in Damascus and the nearby suburb came shortly before Ali Larijani, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei, was scheduled to meet in the Syrian capital with representatives of Palestinian factions at the Iranian Embassy in Mazzeh. The Israeli military said Islamic Jihad had participated alongside Hamas, the Palestinian militant group in the Gaza Strip, in the Oct.
7, 2023 attacks on southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and saw 250 others abducted into Gaza. The military “will continue to operate against the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization wherever necessary,” it said. Israel’s retaliation to the Oct.
7 attack and the ensuing Israel-Hamas war has spilled in.
