Charles Lister, director of the Syria program of the Washington-based Middle East Institute think tank, called the strike a “major escalation.” The attack is sure to draw retaliation, he wrote on the social media platform X.
Syria’s foreign minister, Faisal Mekdad, said “several” people were killed, and a phone call with his counterpart in Iran, he condemned Israel.
State news agency SANA, citing an unnamed military source, said the building in the tightly guarded neighborhood of Mazzeh was leveled.
Though it rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, Israel has said it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.
An Israeli airstrike in a Damascus neighborhood in December killed a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria, Seyed Razi Mousavi.
Last week, airstrikes over the strategic eastern Syrian province of Deir el-Zour near the Iraqi border killed an Iranian adviser.
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