DAMASCUS (Xinhua/Al Jazeera) – The Syrian air defenses responded to an attack by the Zionist regime early on Sunday in the capital Damascus, the Syrian national TV reported.
Several powerful explosions were heard in Damascus after midnight. The Syrian state media said immediate investigations showed it was an attack by the Zionist regime.
At least five people were killed, 15 wounded and several residential buildings damaged in the airstrikes on the Syrian capital Damascus, Syrian state media reported.
The raids hit a building in central Damascus’s Kafr Sousa neighborhood near a large, heavily guarded security complex, Reuters news agency said, citing witnesses.
Loud explosions were heard over a central area of the capital around 12.30am (2130 GMT Saturday), and the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that Syrian air defenses were “confronting hostile targets in the sky around Damascus”.
Citing a military source, SANA reported that five people had been killed, among them a soldier, along with “destruction of a number of residential buildings”.
“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.
Footage posted by state media showed that a 10-storey building was badly damaged in the attack, crushing the structure of its lower floors.
“The strike on Sunday is the deadliest Israeli attack in the Syrian capital,” said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a United Kingdom-based group that has a wide network of sources inside Syria.
The occupying regime frequently carries out missile attacks on targets in Syria, mostly using the airspace of Lebanon or the occupied territories.
Syrian has repeatedly complained to the UN over Zionist assaults, urging the Security Council to take action against Tel Aviv’s crimes. The calls have, however, fallen on deaf ears.
In early November 2022, Syrian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates Faisal Mekdad emphasized that his country will definitely give a crushing response to such acts of aggression at some point in the future.