By Laila Bassam and Kinda Makieh
BEIRUT/DAMASCUS, Jan 20 (Reuters) – An Israeli missile strike on Syria’s capital Damascus on Saturday killed four members of Iran‘s Revolutionary Guards, including the head of the force’s information unit in Syria, a security source in the regional pro-Syria alliance told Reuters.
Israel has long pursued a bombing campaign against Iran-linked targets in Syria. But it has shifted to deadlier strikes in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by militants of the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamist group Hamas from Gaza.
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Syrian state media said a building in the Mazzeh neighbourhood of Damascus was targeted in a likely Israeli attack, without giving further details. Other local media in Syria said explosions were heard across the Syrian capital.
The security source, part of a network of groups close to Syria’s government and its major ally Iran, said the multi-storey building was used by Iranian advisers supporting President Bashar al-Assad’s government, and that it was entirely flattened by “precision-targeted Israeli missiles”.
Iran‘s state-run Press TV said two Iranian Guards military advisers were killed in the Israeli strike on Damascus.
There was no immediate comment from Israel.
Essam Al-Amin, head of the Al-Mowasat Hospital in Damascus, told Reuters that his hospital had received one corpse and three wounded people, including a woman, following Saturday’s attack.
A spokesman for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad told Reuters that no members of their group were wounded in the strike, following reports that some were at the bombed-out building.
In December, an Israeli strike killed two Guards members in Damascus, and another on Dec. 25 killed a senior adviser to the Guards who was overseeing military coordination between Syria and Iran.
(Reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut, Kinda Makieh and Firas Makdesi in Damascus, Nayera Abdallah in Dubai; Writing by Maya Gebeily; editing by Mark Heinrich)
