Israeli airstrikes kill 5 persons in Damascus

DAMASCUS, Feb 19 (AP): Israeli airstrikes targeted a residential neighborhood in the Syrian capital of Damascus early Sunday, killing at least five people and wounding 15, Syrian state news reported.

Loud explosions were heard over a central area of the capital around 12:30 a.m. local time, and SANA reported that Syrian air defenses were "confronting hostile targets in the sky around Damascus."

Syrian state media agency SANA, citing a military source, reported that five people had been killed, among them a soldier, and 15 civilians wounded, along with "destruction of a number of residential buildings."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based war monitor, reported that 15 people, including a woman, were killed in strikes targeting sites connected with Iranian militias and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah. They took place in the Damascus countryside and on an Iranian school in the neighborhood of Kafr Sousa in the capital, it said.

There was no immediate statement from Israel on the attack.

Israeli airstrikes frequently target sites in the vicinity of Damascus. The Saturday night strikes were the first since a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Turkey and Syria on Feb. 6.

The last reported attack on Damascus was on Jan. 2, when the Syrian army reported that Israel's military fired missiles toward the international airport of Syria's capital early Monday, putting it out of service and killing two soldiers and wounding two others.