Israel conducts airstrikes on Palestinian organisation in Syrian capital Damascus
Mar 13, 2025
Tel Aviv [Israel], March 13 : The Israeli Air Force on Thursday conducted strikes on a command center of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organisation in Damascus, the Israel Defence Forces said.
The IDF said that the command center was used to "plan and direct terrorist activities" by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad against Israel.
"The IAF conducted an intelligence-based strike on a terrorist command center belonging to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization in Damascus. The command center was used to plan and direct terrorist activities by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad against the State of Israel," the IDF said in a post on X.
https://x.com/IDF/status/1900199601354973574
The attack, carried out with two missiles, killed at least one person, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as per Al Jazeera.
Israel's Defence Minister Israel Katz said the attack shows Israel "will not allow Syria to become a threat to the state of Israel. There will be no immunity for Islamic terrorism against Israel - whether in Damascus or anywhere else," Al Jazeera reported.
Meanwhile, the UN Commission of Inquiry has said Israel had "intentionally attacked and destroyed" the Palestinian territory's main fertility centre and had simultaneously imposed a siege and blocked aid, including medication for ensuring safe pregnancies, deliveries and neonatal care.
The commission found that Israeli authorities "have destroyed in part the reproductive capacity of Palestinians in Gaza as a group through the systematic destruction of sexual and reproductive healthcare", the UN said in a statement.
It said this amounted to "two categories of genocidal acts" during Israel's war in Gaza. Of its five categories, the inquiry said the two implicating Israel were "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction" and "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group".
"These violations have not only caused severe immediate physical and mental harm and suffering to women and girls, but irreversible long-term effects on the mental health and reproductive and fertility prospects of Palestinians as a group," the commission's chair Navi Pillay said in a statement, as per Al Jazeera.
Israel "categorically rejects" the allegations, its mission in Geneva said.
