Israel’s military said on Sunday that its soldiers had killed 15 Palestinian gunmen during fighting in the northern Gaza Strip.
This from newsmax.com.
In the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis, where Israel has been increasing pressure on Hamas in recent weeks, the military said that snipers, backed by air support, had “eliminated a number of terrorists.”
Further, Israel on Saturday with missile strike flattened a building used as a base of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards in Damascus, killing five Guards and an unspecified number of Syrian troops—Tehran vowed to carry out revenge attacks.
Three Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers killed in an Israeli strike that flattened a building in Damascus on Saturday were described in Iranian state media with an honorific used only for generals, suggesting the targets were senior commanders.
A Reuters journalist at the scene said:
Ambulances and fire trucks gathered around the site of the strike, which had been cordoned off.
Rescue operations for people stuck under the rubble continued through the day. A crane was in place to hoist concrete slabs off the wreckage.
A security source in a network of groups close to Syria’s government and its ally Iran told Reuters:
[T]he multi-story building was used by Iranian advisers supporting President Bashar al-Assad’s government. It was completely flattened by precision-targeted Israeli missiles.
The Guards said:
[A]n unspecified number of members of the Syrian military were killed, along with the five Iranians, whom it identified without giving their ranks.
The security source said:
[O]ne of the slain Iranians ran the elite force’s information unit.
There was no comment from Israel, which has long pursued a bombing campaign against Iran’s military and security presence in Syria but typically does not discuss such attacks publicly.
Israel has killed Iranian Guards in several such strikes in a stepped-up campaign in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by militants of the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamist group Hamas from Gaza.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani said in remarks reported by state media:
The strike was desperate attempt to spread instability in region.
Iran…reserves its right to respond to the organized terrorism of the fake Zionist regime at the appropriate time and place.
Syrian state media reported an Israeli “aerial attack” on a building in the Mazzeh neighborhood of Damascus and said Syrian air defenses had shot down a number of missiles.
Essam Al-Amin, head of the Al-Mowasat Hospital in Damascus, told Reuters:
[H]is hospital had received one dead body and three wounded people, including a woman, following Saturday’s attack.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed Palestinian faction present in Syria and Lebanon, condemned the air strike but told Reuters:
[N]one of its members were wounded, dismissing reports that some were at the bombed-out building.
Iran and its military allies in Syria have entrenched themselves in wide areas of eastern, southern and northern Syria and in several suburbs around the capital.
In December, an Israeli air strike killed two Guards members, and another near Damascus on Dec. 25 killed a senior adviser to the Guards who was overseeing military coordination between Syria and Iran.
In Lebanon, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah as well as local wings of Palestinian militant groups have fired rockets across the border at Israel in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza.
Three security sources told Reuters:
An Israeli strike Saturday in south Lebanon killed two members of Hamas as they were traveling in their car.
Final thought: God speed to the IDF.
