Israeli Airstrike Kills Two People in Damascus, Says Syrian TV

Workers and people stand near a damaged building after, according to Syrian state media reports, several Israeli missiles hit a residential building in the Kafr Sousa district, Damascus, Syria  February 21, 2024. REUTERS/Firas Makdesi
Workers and people stand near a damaged building after, according to Syrian state media reports, several Israeli missiles hit a residential building in the Kafr Sousa district, Damascus, Syria February 21, 2024. REUTERS/Firas Makdesi
TT

Israeli Airstrike Kills Two People in Damascus, Says Syrian TV

Workers and people stand near a damaged building after, according to Syrian state media reports, several Israeli missiles hit a residential building in the Kafr Sousa district, Damascus, Syria  February 21, 2024. REUTERS/Firas Makdesi
Workers and people stand near a damaged building after, according to Syrian state media reports, several Israeli missiles hit a residential building in the Kafr Sousa district, Damascus, Syria February 21, 2024. REUTERS/Firas Makdesi

An Israeli airstrike hit a residential building in the Kafr Sousa district in Syria's capital Damascus on Wednesday, killing two people, Syrian state media and a security source said.

A military source cited by Syrian state TV said the strike at about 9:40 a.m. (0640 GMT) wounded a number of other people, identifying the dead as civilians.

Images published by Syrian state media showed the charred side of a multi-storey building. The security source said the "attack did not achieve its aims".

The neighborhood hosts residential buildings, schools and Iranian cultural centers, and lies near a large, heavily-guarded complex used by security agencies. The district was struck in an Israeli attack in February 2023 that killed Iranian military experts.

Witnesses heard several back-to-back explosions. The blasts scared children at a nearby school and ambulances rushed to the area, the witnesses told Reuters.

There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.

Iran's semi-official Student News Network said no Iranian citizens were killed in the strike.

On Wednesday afternoon, a Reuters witness heard another large blast in the capital that shook the windows of homes. Local Syrian outlet Sham FM said several explosions were heard in the capital without specifying the cause.

Iran has been a major backer of President Bashar al-Assad during Syria's nearly 12-year-old conflict. Its support for Damascus and the Lebanese group Hezbollah has drawn regular Israeli air strikes meant to curb Tehran's extraterritorial military power.

Those strikes have ramped up in line with flaring regional tensions since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, with more than half a dozen Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers killed in suspected Israeli strikes on Syria since December.

As a result, the Guards have scaled back deployment of their senior officers in Syria and have planned to rely more on allied Shiite militia to preserve their sway there, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters earlier this month.

Iran, a backer of Hamas, has sought to stay out of the conflict itself even as it supports groups that have entered the fray from Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq and Syria - the so-called "Axis of Resistance" that is hostile to Israeli and US interests. 



Sudan Army Says Seizes Full Control of Presidential Palace in Khartoum

Sudanese men walk past a bullet-riddled building in Khartoum's twin-city Omdurman on March 20, 2025. (Photo by Ebrahim Hamid / AFP)
Sudanese men walk past a bullet-riddled building in Khartoum's twin-city Omdurman on March 20, 2025. (Photo by Ebrahim Hamid / AFP)
TT

Sudan Army Says Seizes Full Control of Presidential Palace in Khartoum

Sudanese men walk past a bullet-riddled building in Khartoum's twin-city Omdurman on March 20, 2025. (Photo by Ebrahim Hamid / AFP)
Sudanese men walk past a bullet-riddled building in Khartoum's twin-city Omdurman on March 20, 2025. (Photo by Ebrahim Hamid / AFP)

Sudan’s military said it retook the Republican Palace in Khartoum, the last bastion in the capital of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), after nearly two years of fighting.
Social media videos showed its soldiers inside giving the date as the 21st day of Ramadan, which was Friday. A Sudanese military officer wearing a captain’s rank made the announcement in the video, and its details confirmed the troops were inside the compound.
The palace appeared to be in ruins in part, with soldiers’ steps crunching broken tiles underneath their boots.
The fall of the Republican Palace — a compound along the Nile River that was the seat of government before the war — marks another battlefield gain for Sudan’s military. It has made steady advances in recent months under army chief Gen. Abdel-Fattah Burhan.
It means the rival RSF under Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, has been expelled from the capital of Khartoum after Sudan’s war began in April 2023.
The RSF did not immediately acknowledge the loss, which likely won’t stop fighting in the war as the group and its allies still hold territory elsewhere in Sudan.

The RSF, which earlier this year began establishing a parallel government, maintains control of parts of Khartoum and neighbouring Omdurman, as well as western Sudan, where it is fighting to take over the army's last stronghold in Darfur, al-Fashir.
Capturing the capital could hasten the army's full takeover of central Sudan, and harden the east-west territorial division of the country between the two forces.

Both sides have vowed to continue fighting for the remainder of the country, and no efforts at peace talks have materialized.
The war has killed more than 28,000 people, forced millions to flee their homes and left some families eating grass in a desperate attempt to survive as famine sweeps parts of the country. Other estimates suggest a far higher death toll.