By Maya Gebeily and Maayan Lubell
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israel launched strikes on the Syrian capital Damascus and a military site near the western city of Homs on Thursday, the Syrian defence ministry said, as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken toured the region pushing for a halt to fighting.
The Israeli strikes targeted the central Damascus neighbourhood of Kafr Sousa and a military site in the Homs countryside, killing one soldier and injuring seven other people, the ministry said in a statement.
The ministry said the strikes caused “material damage”, but did not elaborate. Earlier in the day, Syrian state media said explosions were heard in Damascus after Israel struck a residential building in Kafr Sousa.
Israel typically does not comment on specific reports of strikes in Syria.
Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iranian-linked targets in Syria for years, but it has ramped up raids since last year’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Palestinian militant group Hamas, which sparked the Gaza war.
On Wednesday, Israeli strikes pounded Beirut’s southern suburbs and Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah said it fired precision guided missiles for the first time at Israeli targets.
The strikes on the edges of Beirut sent thick columns of flames shooting up into the night sky one after the other, shortly after an Israeli military spokesman issued evacuation warnings for the neighbourhood.
Another strike came with no warning, hitting the nearby office of pro-Iran broadcaster Al-Mayadeen, the station said. It said the office had been empty since the conflict began. Lebanon’s health ministry said one person was killed and five others, including a child, were wounded.
The Israeli military named on Wednesday six Palestinian Al Jazeera reporters in Gaza who it said were also members of Hamas or Islamic Jihad militant groups, an allegation the Qatari network rejected as an attempt to silence journalists.
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ Middle East programme said on X that the allegations amounted to smearing Palestinian journalists “with unsubstantiated ‘terrorist’ labels”.
Hezbollah said in a statement late on Wednesday that it had escalated its attacks on Israel, using “precision missiles” for the first time and launched new types of drones on Israeli targets, without offering further details.
The Israeli military said four projectiles were identified as having been fired from Lebanon, two were intercepted and two fell to the ground.
Three Lebanese soldiers were killed, including an officer, in an Israeli strike during the evacuation of wounded people on the outskirts of the village of Yater in southern Lebanon, the Lebanese army said in a statement on Thursday.
The intensifying exchanges of fire come as Washington makes a final major push for peace between Israel and Iran-backed groups Hezbollah and Hamas before the Nov. 5 U.S. presidential election that could alter U.S. policy.
Blinken, who has travelled to the Middle East regularly during the war, is making his first trip since Israel killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, its most wanted enemy, whose death Washington hopes can provide an impetus for peace.
Washington is also aiming to head off a widening of the conflict in anticipation of Israeli retaliation for an Iranian Oct. 1 missile attack. Blinken said Israel’s retaliation should not lead to greater escalation.
CONFLICT SPREADING
But the conflict appeared to be spreading, with new strikes around midday on Wednesday on Tyre, a UNESCO-listed port city in south Lebanon, which also came after Israeli evacuation orders.
“We are better off dying with dignity than living on the street,” said Batoum Zalghout, 25, who fled the latest evacuation zone for another part of the city. She said she had been already displaced with her two children five times.
The Israeli military said it had targeted Hezbollah command and control centres there, including its southern front headquarters. There was no immediate comment from Hezbollah.
In Gaza, where Israel has intensified an assault on the northern edge of the territory since killing the leader of Hamas last week, health authorities and residents reported 42 people killed in fresh Israeli strikes, most in the north.
Among the dead were Mohammed and Bilal Abu Atwi – a driver for U.N. aid agency UNRWA and his brother – killed in a strike that blasted their U.N.-marked vehicle in Deir al-Balah.
“Our children have become martyrs as they were serving their community and people,” their father Marwan said at the hospital where their bodies were laid out in white plastic bags.
The U.S. has written to Israel, giving it 30 days to boost humanitarian aid access in Gaza, which has seen almost daily bombardments, or risk having some US military assistance cut.
Arriving in Lebanon for talks on ending hostilities, Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said providing arms to Israel posed a dilemma.
“On the one hand, Israel is attacked every day and not supporting it would mean that people are not (being) protected … On the other, it is also Germany’s responsibility to stand up for international humanitarian law.”
In the year since fighters directed by Sinwar rampaged through Israeli towns killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, Israel has laid Gaza to waste to root out Hamas, killing nearly 43,000 Palestinians. The past month’s strikes on Lebanon have displaced at least 1.2 million Lebanese.
(Reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo, Laila Bassam, Timour Azhari and Maya Gebeily in Beirut, Amina Ismail in Tyre, Clauda Tanios and Nayera Abdullah in Dubai, Maayan Lubell and Jonathan Saul in Jerusalem, Phil Stewart in Rome, Humeyra Pamuk and Simon Lewis in Washington, Thomas Escritt in Berlin, Hatem Maher; Writing by Michael Perry; editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan and Lincoln Feast.)
