Damascus car bomb kills one, drone strike near Lebanese border

A bomb attached to a car exploded Saturday morning in the western part of the Syrian capital which is home to several diplomatic missions, killing one person and causing property damage, state media reported.

The Mazze neighborhood of Damascus is home to the Iranian consulate, destroyed last month in a strike blamed on Israel. The attack at the time killed seven people, including two Iranian generals and a member of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and triggered the first direct Iranian military attack on Israel, raising fears of a region-wide war.

Several airstrikes have hit the tightly secured neighborhood in recent months, mainly targeting Iranian officials.

State News Agency, SANAdid not say who the person killed was, but said the explosion set two other cars on fire.

Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition body, said the man killed in the blast was a Mazze resident who carried a card identifying him as a Syrian army officer. Abdurrahman said the deceased man had close ties to the Iranians.

Hours after the Damascus blast, an Israeli drone strike reportedly targeted a car and truck outside the western Syrian town of Qusair, northwest of Damascus, near the border Lebanese, reported the Observatory and a pan-Arab television channel based in Beirut.

The strike hit the two vehicles near the Dabaa air base. Qusair and its suburbs have been struck several times in recent months by Israeli drones targeting Hezbollah fighters in the area.

The based in Beirut Al-Mayadeen The television did not specify whether there were any casualties, but the OSDH indicated that two Hezbollah members were killed and several others injured during the drone attack.

Lebanon-based Hezbollah and Israeli forces exchanged cross-border fire a day after the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, on an almost daily basis. Since then, more than 400 people have been killed in Lebanon, most of them Hezbollah fighters, and more than 70 civilians and non-combatants, according to an Associated Press tally.

Meanwhile, Israel says at least 15 soldiers and 10 civilians have been killed so far in the clashes.

Tehran has been sending advisers to Syria since the start of the country's conflict, which later turned into civil war, in March 2011 and killed half a million people. Iran-backed fighters have helped tip the balance of power in favor of President Bashar Assad's government.

The Iranian military presence in Syria is a major concern for Israel, which has pledged to end Iranian entrenchment along its northern border. Syria has accused Israel of carrying out hundreds of strikes against targets in government-controlled areas in recent years – but Israel has rarely acknowledged such strikes.

The war in Gaza began after Hamas carried out a surprise attack on southern Israel. Around 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage. Israel responded with a retaliatory war that killed more than 35,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, according to Gaza health officials.