Syrian soldier killed and seven wounded in Israeli air strikes on Damascus and Homs

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Israeli air strikes on Syria’s capital Damascus and a military site near the western city of Homs on Thursday killed a soldier and wounded seven others.
The strikes targeted two different locations in the Kfar Sousa neighbourhood of Damascus at 3:40am local time, the Sana news agency reported. The other struck a military site in rural Homs. The strikes caused material damage, Syrian state media Sana said, without providing details.
Israel has carried out attacks on Iran-linked sites in Syria for years, but has increased strikes since the Gaza war began in October last year. It rarely openly acknowledges targeting the country.
On Tuesday, an Israeli air strike destroyed a section of the main motorway linking Syria and Lebanon at the Masnaa border crossing, hours after the Israeli army admitted to killing the leader of Hezbollah’s financial division in a Damascus strike on Monday. The strike hit an area of no-man’s-land between both countries, authorities told The National.
The army has previously attacked the border crossing, used by civilians fleeing Israeli air strikes on Lebanon, struck the coastal city of Latakia, and reportedly launched a rare ground raid on central Syria last month.
A member of the Syrian security service was killed in an Israeli air strike on the southern city of Quneitra on October 9, a day after 10 people were killed in a strike on the capital.
Israel acknowledged a strike near the Masnaa crossing earlier this month, claiming it was used by Hezbollah to transfer weapons from Iran.
The air force also continued overnight strikes on Lebanon, attacking Beirut’s southern suburbs at least 17 times in strikes which destroyed six residential buildings. The strikes on the Laylaki area were “the most violent in the area since the beginning of the war”, the state-run National News Agency reported.
One person was also killed and six wounded in a strike on the Jnah neighbourhood. No warning was given ahead of time.
A total of 2,574 people have now been confirmed killed in Israeli attacks across Lebanon since the outbreak of cross-border fighting on October 8 last year. The majority were killed after Israel escalated into all-out war last month and launched a ground invasion of southern Lebanon on October 1. More than 12,000 others have been wounded, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.