Syria says an Israeli strike has hit a Damascus residential area

Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years. (Image: Reuters)

Israeli strikes hit a neighbourhood of the Syrian capital on Wednesday morning, Syrian state TV said, and other media reported casualties. State TV reported that several missiles hit the western neighbourhood of Kfar Sousseh and didn't elaborate.

The pro-government Sham FM radio station said the strike hit a building near an Iranian school and caused casualties. Israel had no comment.

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor, said the strike was an assassination. He did not say who might have been the target. Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on targets inside government-controlled parts of war-torn Syria in recent years.

Israel rarely acknowledges its actions in Syria, but it has said that it targets bases of Iran-allied militant groups, such as Lebanon's Hezbollah, which has sent thousands of fighters to support Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces. Last month, an Israeli strike on the Syrian capital's western neighbourhood of Mazzeh destroyed a building used by the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, killing at least five Iranians.

In December, an Israeli airstrike on a suburb of Damascus killed Iranian general Seyed Razi Mousavi, a longtime adviser of the Iranian paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Syria. Israel has also targeted Palestinian and Lebanese operatives in Syria over the past years.