Car bomb in Syrian capital kills one. Drone attack near Lebanese border hits two vehicles

BEIRUT (AP) — A bomb attached to a car exploded Saturday morning in the western part of the Syrian capital, home to several diplomatic missions, killing one person and causing property damage, state media reported.

Houses in the Mazze neighborhood in Damascus the Iranian consulate, destroyed last month in an attack blamed on Israel. The attack at the time killed seven people, including two Iranian generals and a member of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and triggered a direct attack Iranian military attack over Israel for the first time, provoking fears of a regional war.

Several airstrikes have hit the heavily guarded neighborhood in recent months, mainly targeting Iranian officials.

State news agency SANA did not say who was killed, but said the explosion set two other cars on fire.

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition war monitor, said the man killed in the explosion was a Mazze resident who was carrying a card identifying him as a Syrian army officer. Abdurrahman said the dead man had close ties to the Iranians.

Hours after the explosion in Damascus, an Israeli drone strike reportedly targeted a car and a truck on the outskirts of the western Syrian city of Qusair, northwest of Damascus, near the border with Lebanon, the Observatory and a radio station reported. pan-Arab TV company based in Beirut.

The attack hit both vehicles near the Dabaa air base. Qusair and its suburbs have been hit several times in recent months by Israeli drones targeting Hezbollah fighters present in the area.

Beirut-based Al-Mayadeen TV did not report whether there were any casualties, but the Observatory said two Hezbollah members were killed and several others were injured in the drone attack.

Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Israeli forces exchanged cross-border fire a day after the Israel-Hamas War began on October 7th almost daily. Since then, more than 400 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters, and more than 70 civilians and noncombatants, according to an Associated Press tally.

However, Israel says at least 15 soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed so far in the clashes.

Tehran has been sending advisers to Syria since the country’s conflict, which later turned into a civil war, began in March 2011 and has killed half a million people. Iranian-backed fighters have helped tip the balance of power in favor of President Bashar Assad’s government.

Iran’s military presence in Syria has been a major concern for Israel, which has vowed to prevent Iranian entrenchment along its northern border. Syria has accused Israel of carrying out hundreds of attacks on targets in government-controlled zones in recent years – but Israel has rarely acknowledged such attacks.

The war in Gaza began after Hamas led militants in a surprise attack on southern Israel. Around 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage. Israel responded with a retaliatory war that killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to Gaza health officials.