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At least seven civilians, including children, were killed, and 11 others were injured after Israel hit a residential building in the al-Mazzeh area west of Syria’s capital Damascus, the state news agency reported Tuesday.
The area is home to embassies and security headquarters.
Syria’s defense ministry said the toll was preliminary as rescuers were still combing the rubble.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said: “Israel targeted a building frequented by senior Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah operatives, as well as a car parked in front of the building.”
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said nine people were killed, five of them civilians including a child.
At least two of the dead were foreigners, the Observatory said, without specifying their nationality.
None of the dead were Iranian, the Iranian embassy in Damascus said.
Later Tuesday, the Syrian foreign ministry condemned “in the strongest terms this brutal crime against defenseless civilians” calling for “immediate measures” to stop Israel from dragging the region “into a confrontation that will have disastrous consequences”.
AFPTV footage from the scene showed a building engulfed in smoke, with rubble and torn metal strewn on the ground.
Electrician Adel Habib, 61, who lives in the building which was hit, said the strike was like “Judgment Day”.
“I was on my way home when the explosion happened and communications and electricity were cut off so I could no longer contact my family” inside the building, Habib said.
“These were the longest five minutes of my life until I heard the voices of my wife, children and grandchildren.”
Syrian state television said the strike caused “extensive” damage.
An AFP correspondent said the first three floors of the building had been destroyed and counted about 20 cars damaged by falling debris.
State media earlier reported that Syria’s air defenses had intercepted “hostile” targets in the vicinity of Damascus.
Israel has been carrying out strikes against targets in Syria for years but has ramped up such raids since the Oct. 7 attacks last year, amid fears over regional war as it also targets Lebanon, killing thousands of civilians and displacing hundreds of thousands of others, on top of its atrocities in Gaza, where it killed over 42,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.
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