At least 20 people, including Palestinian and pro-Iranian fighters, were killed today in Israeli air strikes targeting residential buildings in Damascus and its suburbs, the non-governmental Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The attacks coincided with a visit to Damascus by senior Iranian official Ali Larijanni, an adviser to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Larijani met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to discuss regional events and Israel's escalation against the Palestinians and Lebanon, the Syrian presidency said.
Israel, which has been in open war against Hezbollah in Lebanon since September, has stepped up airstrikes on Syria, where the pro-Iranian movement is based, to bolster the Syrian regime's forces.
In the luxurious district of Maze in Damascus, where the main headquarters of the UN, embassies and Syrian security institutions are located, three buildings were destroyed in the strikes, and 10 people died, the Observatory reported.
Three civilians and two fighters from pro-Iranian armed factions were among the dead.
The second Israeli strike was aimed at a residential complex inhabited by Palestinians in the Qudsaya neighborhood, in the northwest of the Syrian capital, the Observatory specified.
Ten people died in that attack, including at least three members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
A spokesman for the Israeli army confirmed that strikes are being carried out in Syria against military bases of Islamic Jihad, an armed group active in Gaza.
The director of the Observatory, Rami Abde Rahman, believes that the intensity of the blow, which coincides with Larijani's visit, sends a message to Iran.
Larijani should go to Beirut on Friday.
Since the start of Syria's civil war in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes against the Syrian army, Hezbollah, or other Tehran-backed groups.
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