Middle East latest: Israeli airstrike targets residential building in Damascus

Mar. 13, 2025, 10:33 AM ET

Israel's military carried out an airstrike on the outskirts of Syria's capital Thursday targeting a residential building that Israel said was a command center of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. A member of the group at the scene told The Associated Press the strike hit a home of the group’s leader which has been empty for years. Local paramedics said three people were wounded.

Also Thursday, United Nations-backed experts accused Israel of “the systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence” in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Israel has refused to cooperate with the commission, accusing it and the council of being biased against it.

The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza was paused by a fragile ceasefire in January. Negotiations over the future of the truce and the release of Israeli hostages are continuing in Qatar, but there are no signs of a breakthrough.

Here's the latest:

Trump's apparent backtrack on Gaza plan is welcomed by Arab countries

Arab countries welcomed an extremely brief remark from President Donald Trump indicating he has backed away from his plan to depopulate Gaza.

Trump responded “Nobody’s expelling any Palestinians,” to a reporter Wednesday before asking her where she worked and implying it was a dumb question.

U.S. allies Egypt and Jordan seized on those four words and released statements welcoming the remarks. Both had rejected Trump’s earlier suggestion that they accept large numbers of Palestinian refugees.

Hamas issued a statement welcoming Trump’s “apparent retreat from his proposed plan to displace our people from Gaza.”

Last month, Trump proposed that Gaza’s roughly 2 million Palestinians be resettled in other countries so the U.S. could take ownership of Gaza and develop it as a beach destination for others. Human rights experts said it would likely violate international law.

25,000 Palestinian patients need medical evacuation from Gaza, global aid group says

Around 50 patients are being evacuated each day from Gaza by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies alongside its local partners.

“Yesterday, we saved 39 lives,” Kate Forbes, the federation's president, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

These 25,000 patients include chronically ill people with cancer, heart disease or hemophilia whose regular treatment has been interrupted due to Gaza's destroyed healthcare infrastructure.

The trickle of medical evacuations is still taking place during Israel's renewed blockade of humanitarian aid and electricity into Gaza.

In Cairo this week, Forbes met with some of the medical evacuees and the children accompanying them. The kids she met are deeply affected by the trauma they've witnessed, she said, leaving many of them mute upon arrival.

3 people were wounded by the Israeli strike in Syria, medics say

The Syrian Civil Defense group, also known as the White Helmets, said a woman was seriously wounded and two men were lightly injured. The group said no one was killed.

The paramedic group said the strike destroyed the targeted building in a Damascus suburb and damaged two nearby buildings.

Syrian building targeted by Israeli strike ‘was home of militant group leader'

A Palestinian Islamic Jihad member at the scene of the airstrike in Syria told The Associated Press that the apartment that was targeted was the home of the group’s leader Ziad Nakhaleh.

Ismail Sindak said the apartment had been empty for years, adding that Nakhaleh is not in Syria. Asked whether anyone was killed in the strike, Sindak said “the house was empty.”

It was not immediately clear where Nakhaleh is but he is believed to spend his time between Lebanon, Iran and Syria.

The Israeli military said its air force conducted an intelligence-based strike on a command center belonging to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Damascus. It added that command center was used to plan and direct “terrorist activities” by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad against Israel.

1 reported killed after Israeli airstrike hits residential building in Syria

Syria’s state news agency says an Israeli airstrike has struck a residential building on the outskirts of the Syrian capital Damascus.

The agency did not give further details about Thursday’s strike.

Israel’s defense minister confirms the airstrike in Damascus

Israel’s military said that the strike targeted a command center of the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It said that the center has been used to direct attacks against Israel and vowed to “respond forcefully” to the presence of Palestinian militant groups inside Syria.

Defense Minister Israel Katz warned in a statement that “whenever terrorist activity is organized against Israel,” Syria’s new President Ahmad al-Sharaa “will find air force planes circling above him and attacking terrorist targets.”

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a war monitor, said the building targeted is located in the suburb of Dummar, northwest of the capital and was inhabited by Palestinians. It said one person was killed.

Israel sends food aid to Druze minority group in Syria

Israel says it has sent 10,000 packages of food aid to Syria’s Druze, as it seeks to forge ties with the minority to shape the country’s troubled transition from civil war.

The Israeli Foreign Ministry said Thursday that the operation was conducted in recent weeks in coordination with local Druze leaders, with most of the aid delivered to the overwhelmingly Druze southern region of Sweida.

Israel says it is supporting an embattled minority in a country now ruled by Islamists. But many Druze have rejected its overtures, and critics accuse Israel trying to weaken and divide Syria following the overthrow of President Bashar Assad.

Israel seized a buffer zone in southern Syria shortly after Assad’s overthrow and has carried out waves of airstrikes to destroy Syria’s military. It has ordered the new security forces not to operate south of the capital, Damascus.

Israel says it is acting in Syria to protect its citizens from Iran-backed groups that were allied with Assad as well as the new government, led by a former senior al-Qaida leader who cut ties with the group several years ago.

Report says Israel used sexual and reproductive violence in Gaza

United Nations-backed experts on Thursday accused Israel of “the systematic use of sexual, reproductive and other gender-based violence” in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Israel’s mission to the U.N. in Geneva rejected the allegations and accused the The Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, which was created by the U.N.-backed Human Rights Council, of relying on “second-hand, single, uncorroborated sources.”

Israel has refused to cooperate with the commission, accusing it and the council of being biased against it.

In its report released Thursday, the commission examined the widespread destruction of Gaza, the use of heavy explosives in civilian areas and Israeli attacks on hospitals and health facilities. It said all three led to “disproportionate violence against women and children.”

Israel says it took extraordinary measures to avoid harming civilians in the 15-month war, which has been paused by a fragile ceasefire. It blames civilian deaths and destruction on Hamas because the militants operate in residential areas.

The commission also accused Israeli security forces of rape and sexual violence against Palestinian detainees. Israel denies any systematic abuse of prisoners and says it takes action when there are violations.

The commission is led by former U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay. Its findings can be used as evidence for the International Criminal Court or other bodies that seek to prosecute war crimes.

The war began when Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages. A U.N. envoy last year said there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas committed rape and sexual violence in the attack.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed over 48,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not say how many of the dead were combatants.