Syrian state-run media said Israel struck the upscale Mazzeh district of Damascus on Friday, the second such attack in as many days to hit the neighborhood home to embassies, security headquarters and United Nations offices.
"Israeli aggression targets Mazzeh area in Damascus," the official SANA news agency said, after reporting a deadly Israeli strike on the district a day earlier.
As attacks intensify against the backdrop of the war in Lebanon, Israeli strikes in and around Damascus on Thursday killed 23 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said.
Thursday's strike on Mazzeh killed 13 people, including civilians and Iran-backed fighters, while an attack on the outskirts of Damascus killed 10 Palestinian militants, the monitor said.
Israeli authorities, who rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria, claimed responsibility for Thursday's, saying they targeted the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The attacks coincided with an official visit to Damascus on Thursday by Ali Larijani, a senior adviser to Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
Israel has ramped up strikes on Syria recently, including in areas near the Lebanese border mainly targeting bastions of Hezbollah.
Israel has been at war with the Iran-backed group since September, following a year of exchanges of cross-border fire initiated by Hezbollah over the war in the Gaza Strip.
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