New Delhi: At least 15 people, including civilians, were killed in an Israeli rocket strike that hit a residential building in Damascus’s Kafr Sousa neighbourhood early on Sunday, reported AFP quoting the Syrian Observatory for human rights. The Israeli airstrikes targeted a heavily guarded security complex close to Iranian installations, witnesses and officials told Reuters.
The strike comes weeks after powerful earthquakes jolted Syria, killing thousands of people.
The rare, targeted strike damaged several buildings in the densely populated district close to Omayyad square in the heart of the capital, where multi-story security buildings are located within residential areas.
Reuters citing state media said that Israel had carried out air strikes targeting several areas in the capital shortly after midnight, causing several deaths and injuries among civilians, and damage to several residential buildings.
"At 00:22 am (2222 GMT), the Israeli enemy carried out an aerial aggression from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights targeting several areas in Damascus and its vicinity, including residential neighbourhoods," Syria's defence ministry said in a statement.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike, which hit close to an Iranian cultural centre, had killed 15 people, including civilians.
"It caused damage to several civilian homes and material damage to a number of neighbourhoods in Damascus and its vicinity," the army said in a statement, Reuters reported.
According to AFP, since the beginning of the war in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of air strikes against its neighbour, primarily targeting positions of the Syrian army, Iranian forces, and Lebanon's Hezbollah, allies of the Syrian regime, but it rarely hits residential areas of the capital.
In a preliminary toll, it said the strike killed five people, among them a soldier, and injured 15 civilians, some in critical condition.
Footage posted by state media showed that a 10-storey building was badly damaged in the attack, crushing the structure of its lower floors.
Images released by state media showed several of the building's windows had been blown out.
"The strike on Sunday is the deadliest Israeli attack in the Syrian capital," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Observatory, which has a wide network of sources inside Syria, told AFP.
The January 2 strike hit "positions for Hezbollah and pro-Iranian groups inside the airport and its surroundings, including a weapons warehouse", the Observatory said.
The conflict in Syria started in 2011 with the brutal repression of peaceful protests and escalated to pull in foreign powers and global jihadists.
Nearly half a million people have been killed, and the conflict has forced around half of the country's pre-war population from their homes.
(With agency inputs)