Israel targets what it says was an Islamic Jihad command center in Damascus

DAMASCUS — An Israeli airstrike targeted an apartment building in a residential neighborhood in the Syrian capital on Thursday, aiming at what Israel said was a Palestinian militant “command center.”

Neighbors in the building in the upscale Dumar neighborhood said the apartment had been vacant for several years. A Syrian housekeeper in an apartment next door was seriously injured in the attack.

“It’s unacceptable that whenever they want to attack someone, they attack a residential area,” said Mohammad Hourani, a 40-year-old businessman, standing in his sister’s damaged apartment next door to the flat gutted by an airstrike. “We are asking the president for a full investigation.”

The apartment building was in an upscale neighborhood with well-kept buildings and large gardens in north Damascus.

Emily Garthwaite for NPR

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Emily Garthwaite for NPR

He said the housekeeper, who was hanging laundry on the balcony at the time, had been seriously injured and taken to the hospital with a head wound.

Israel carried out a wave of airstrikes on Syrian military bases and weapons dumps after the fall of the regime of Bashar al-Assad in December, saying the attacks were to prevent weapons getting into the hands of extremist groups. But strikes on the capital itself have been rare since the rebel movement that toppled Assad took power in December. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the target on Thursday was what he called the headquarters of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Damascus.

“We are doing this because we have a clear policy: whoever attacks us or plans to attack us, we strike them,” he said.

Israel’s military said in a statement that the Israeli air force had “conducted an intelligence-based strike on a terrorist command center” belonging to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. “The command center was used to plan and direct terrorist activities by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad against the State of Israel,” the statement said.

A spokesperson for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Muhammad al-Haj Musa, denied that the building was a command center, writing on Telegram that Israel had “targeted an empty house, not a leadership headquarters for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad Movement.”

Hourani said that a member of the Palestinian resistance had lived in the targeted apartment 10 years ago, but the flat had been empty for years.

A Syrian oil company employee with offices in the same complex also said the apartment that was attacked had been vacant for several years.

All the apartment windows were shattered and the metal doors to the balcony twisted and thrown off their hinges.

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Osama Mushail, the oil company representative, said he witnessed the airstrike. A video he took of the immediate aftermath showed a seemingly unconscious woman being carried on a stretcher to an ambulance.

The apartment building was in an upscale neighborhood with well-kept buildings and large gardens in north Damascus. Almost two hours after the airstrike, vapor trails from Israeli fighter jets were still visible.

Hourani said the wounded housekeeper has seven children. “She might die,” he said. “Who is going to feed her children?”

He said his three-year-old nephew, who lived in the apartment next door to the gutted flat, was in kindergarten at the time of the strike.

A large African grey parrot perched motionless in a cage on the kitchen counter, blood seeping from its wing feathers and its cage littered with broken glass.

A resident’s pet parrot suffered a bloodied wing during the airstrike.

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Among shards of glass on the kitchen counters were remnants of a meal being prepared, including a child-size portion of fried chicken. All the apartment windows were shattered and the metal doors to the balcony twisted and thrown off their hinges.

Dozens of masked security personnel from the interim Syrian government crowded around the entrance to the building. The Syrian government, which has said it does not view Israel as an enemy, had no immediate comment on the attack.

Israel has stepped up incursions into the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and airstrikes in the south of the country in the past several weeks.