DAMASCUS/BEIRUT: Fifteen people were killed in Zionist strikes on residential buildings in Damascus on Thursday, Syrian state media reported, and the Zionist entity claimed the attacks targeted military sites and the headquarters of the Islamic Jihad group. The buildings targeted were located in the suburbs of Mazzeh and Qudsaya, both in the west of the Syrian capital, SANA news agency reported, citing a Syrian military source.

Commanders in Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards based in Syria have been known to reside in Mazzeh, according to residents who fled after recent strikes that killed some key figures from the groups. Mazzeh’s high-rise blocks have been used by the authorities in the past to house leaders of Palestinian factions including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Meanwhile, a senior Lebanese official has signaled that Hezbollah is ready to pull its forces away from the Lebanese-Zionist border in any ceasefire, while rejecting the Zionist entity’s demand for freedom to act against the group in Lebanon in the future. A Zionist minister indicated that a ceasefire was closer than at any point since the war began, though he said a sticking point was ensuring the Zionist entity

retains freedom to act inside Lebanon should any deal be violated. Pressing its offensive, the Zionist entity launched airstrikes on Beirut’s Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs on Thursday, keeping up its unusually intensive bombardment of the area for a third consecutive day. Hezbollah has kept up rocket fire into the Zionist entity and its fighters have been battling Zionist troops on the ground in the south.

A World Bank report estimated the cost of physical damage and economic losses due to the conflict in Lebanon at $8.5 billion – a massive price for a country still suffering the effects of a financial collapse five years ago. Senior Lebanese official Ali Hassan Khalil, speaking to Al Jazeera late on Wednesday, said Lebanon was ready to “precisely” implement UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended a 2006 war between the Zionist entity and Hezbollah.

Its terms require Hezbollah to remove fighters and weapons from areas between the border and the Litani River, which runs about 30 km from Lebanon’s southern border. Asked whether Hezbollah had informed him of a readiness to withdraw to the Litani, Khalil - a close Hezbollah ally and top aide to Lebanon’s parliament speaker - said the group had expressed its commitment to Resolution 1701.

Earlier this week, White House envoy Amos Hochstein, who has led several fruitless attempts to broker a ceasefire, told Axios he thought “there is a shot” at a truce in Lebanon soon. It points to a last-ditch effort by the outgoing US administration to seal a Lebanon deal, with diplomacy to end the Gaza war adrift. Khalil said that Lebanese negotiators had reached agreement on “a certain text” with Hochstein during his last visit to Beirut.

Plumes of smoke rose over the southern Beirut suburbs known as Dahiyeh, where the Zionist entity’s latest strikes destroyed five buildings, sources familiar with the damage said. Zionist raids on the area have largely been taking place at night but this week have been happening in the morning too.

The Zionist military said its fighter jets carried out a series of attacks in the southern Beirut area, targeting weapons warehouses, military headquarters and other infrastructures used by Hezbollah. “We say God help us ... because it seems that things are developing, it is getting worse, and I don’t even know if there is a solution now,” said Ayat, a 33-year-old Lebanese woman. Lebanon’s National News Agency (NNA) said five people were killed in airstrikes on the towns of Bazourieh and Jmaijmeh in southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s health ministry said a Zionist airstrike in Baalbek killed another three people. – Reuters