The “Telegram” channel affiliated with Iranian state television reported that Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi condemned the Israeli attack on Damascus, adding that “the Islamic Republic will not leave the crimes of the Zionist regime unanswered.”
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani condemned the Israeli raid and said, “Without the slightest doubt, the blood of these great martyrs will not be in vain.”
Security forces were deployed around the destroyed four-story building, while ambulances and fire engines were seen in the area. A search is underway for people trapped under the rubble. Windows were also broken in nearby buildings.
A grocer near the site of the attack said he heard five successive explosions around 10:15 a.m. on Saturday (Damascus time), adding that he later witnessed the bodies of a man and a woman being removed, in addition to three wounded people.
The store shook. “I stayed inside for a few seconds and then went out and saw smoke rising from behind the mosque,” said the man, who asked not to be named for security reasons.
“What happened was terrifying. I collapsed,” said Khaled Maoud, who lives nearby.
The raid came amid escalating tensions in the region as Israel moves forward with its attack on Gaza. The Israeli offensive there, one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in modern history, has killed nearly 25,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and caused widespread destruction and uprooted more than 80 percent of the Strip's population of 2.3 million. Breath from their homes.
Emergency services work in a building hit by an airstrike in Damascus, Syria.credit: AP
Israel launched the attack after an unprecedented cross-border attack by Hamas on Israel on October 7 that left 1,200 people dead and about 250 others taken hostage. Israel believes that approximately 130 hostages remain in Hamas captivity. The war has raised tensions across the region, threatening to ignite other conflicts.
Last month, an Israeli air strike on a Damascus suburb killed Iranian General Seyed Radi Mousavi, a longtime adviser to Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guards in Syria. Israel has also targeted Palestinian and Lebanese activists in Syria over the past years.
Iranian and Syrian officials have long acknowledged that Iran has military advisers and experts in Syria, but they have denied the presence of any ground forces. Thousands of fighters from Iranian-backed groups participated in the Syrian conflict that began in March 2011, helping to tip the balance of power in favor of President Bashar al-Assad.
Israel has carried out hundreds of raids on targets inside government-controlled areas in war-torn Syria in recent years.
Israel rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, but has said it is targeting the bases of armed groups allied with Iran, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Earlier this month, a raid said to have been carried out by Israel led to the killing of prominent Hamas leader Saleh Al-Arouri in Beirut.
download
Over the past weeks, missiles have been fired from Syria into northern Israel and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, raising tensions along the Lebanon-Israel border and attacks on ships in the Red Sea by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.
AP, Reuters
Get a direct note from our foreign correspondents on what's making headlines around the world. Subscribe to the weekly What in the World newsletter here.
