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Israel strikes outside of Damascus as Syria peace talks sputter

Sherif Tarek, Bloomberg News on

Published in News & Features

Israel carried out multiple airstrikes on the outskirts of Syria’s capital, Syrian state media said, as efforts to ease tensions between the neighboring countries showed little progress.

The strikes Wednesday hit in the vicinity of Al-Kiswah City, south of Damascus, where Israeli drones had earlier killed six Syrian soldiers, the state-run news agency Sana reported.

In Tuesday’s attack, soldiers were killed after discovering surveillance equipment. Israeli drones kept the site inaccessible until the next day, when Syrian troops used “appropriate” weapons to enter and recover the bodies, Sana said, citing a government source. Additional Israeli strikes followed.

At least 15 Israeli airstrikes took place Wednesday in different parts of the countryside of Damascus, targeting military sites, according to the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR). In the southwestern province of Suwayda, the epicenter of sectarian violence that broke out last month, Israeli helicopters landed, Syria TV reported without providing details.

Israel Defense Forces have not issued a statement on the strikes.

 

U.S.-mediated talks between Syrian and Israeli officials took place in Paris earlier this month, in an effort to stabilize the region. In July, a flare-up of violence against the Druze — a minority group in Syria that Israel vowed to protect — prompted Israeli strikes on Damascus and Suwayda.

The SOHR group said Wednesday’s airstrikes were nearly 6 miles away from the venue of Damascus International Fair, which President Ahmed Al-Sharaa inaugurated on the same day, hoping to attract investment. Representatives of more than 800 local and foreign companies attended the event, which was unaffected by the attacks.

Sharaa, a former Al-Qaeda commander whose Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham group led the ousting of President Bashar al-Assad in December, is keen to revitalize his country’s economy, which has been devastated by civil war since 2011.


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