Monitor says militants among 20 killed in Israel strikes on Syria
A war monitor said Israeli strikes in and around Damascus on Thursday killed 20 people including Palestinian militants and Iran-backed fighters, as attacks intensify during the Lebanon war.
The attacks coincided with an official visit to Damascus by Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Israel has ramped up strikes on Syria recently, including in areas near the Lebanese border mainly targeting bastions of Lebanese movement Hezbollah. Israel has been at war with the Iran-backed group since September.
"The death toll from the Israeli strikes on the Mazzeh neighbourhood and Qudsaya rose to 20 people, in addition to 21 other wounded," the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Mazzeh neighbourhood, home to embassies, United Nations offices and security headquarters, has been the target of previous strikes blamed on Israel.
Qudsaya is located on the outskirts of Damascus.
"Israeli strikes destroyed three multi-storey buildings in the Mazzeh neighbourhood, killing 10 people," said the Observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
It added that the dead included at least three civilians and two non-Syrian Iran-backed fighters.
In Qudsaya, Israeli jets targeted "an apartment complex housing Palestinians, killing 10 people, including at least three members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement," the monitor said.
An Israeli military spokesman said that "we attacked Islamic Jihad military bases in Syria" on Thursday, in a rare claim of responsibility for strikes on the war-torn country.
Islamic Jihad has fought alongside Hamas against Israeli forces in Gaza and has been at war with Israel before.
- 'Residential buildings' -
Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory, said that the fact that the attack coincided with Larijani's visit was a "message to Iran".
It was however unlikely that the senior adviser was a target, he added.
Larijani is expected to visit Beirut on Friday, where he will meet Prime Minister Najib Mikati, the premier's office said.
Earlier, Syria's defence ministry said the twin Israeli air strikes killed 15 people after "targeting residential buildings in the Mazzeh neighbourhood of Damascus and the Qudsaya area in the Damascus countryside".
The official SANA news agency published video footage of smoke covering a street.
Early last month Syria's government said seven civilians were killed in an Israeli air strike, in Mazzeh, which the Observatory said targeted a building used by Iran's Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah.
In April, Syrian and Iranian officials blamed Israeli air strikes for the destruction of Iran's embassy consular annex in Mazzeh. The strike killed seven members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.
That attack led to Iran's first ever direct strike on Israel with a barrage of drones and missiles, which in turn led to an apparent Israeli retaliation, raising fears of regional conflagration.
Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah have been among the Syrian government's most important allies in the country's civil war that began in 2011.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence.
