Emergency services work at a building hit by an air strike in Damascus, Syria. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Israeli strikes in central Syria killed at least seven people late Sunday (September 8, 2024), including three civilians, a war monitor reported.

Since the start of the civil war in Syria in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes there, targeting pro-Iranian groups in particular.

“The number of dead in the Israeli strikes on the Masyaf region stands at seven, namely three civilians, including a man and his son who were in a car, and four unidentified soldiers,” said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a vast network of sources inside the country.

The attack also wounded at least 15 others and destroyed military facilities in the area, the Observatory said. 

“Thirteen violent explosions rang out in the zone housing scientific research centres in Masyaf where pro-Iranian groups and weapons development experts are present,” the group said in an earlier statement.

The Syrian state news agency Sana had previously reported five killed and 19 wounded near Masyaf, citing a medical source.

“Around 11:20 pm (2020 GMT) on Sunday (September 8, 2024), the Israeli enemy carried out an air attack from the northwest of Lebanon targeting a number of military sites in the central region,” Sana reported, citing a military source. “Our air defence shot down some missiles.”

Israeli air raids in Syria have intensified since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

Israeli authorities rarely comment on individual strikes in Syria, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence there.

“At the end of August, three pro-Iranian fighters were killed in the central region of Homs in strikes attributed to Israel,” the Observatory said.

A few days later, the Israeli military said it had killed an unspecified number of fighters belonging to Hamas ally Islamic Jihad in a strike in Syria near the Lebanese border.

People gather at the scene of a collapsed two-storey building in Jos, Nigeria, on July, 12, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

A two-story school collapsed during morning classes Friday in north-central Nigeria, killing 22 students and sending rescuers on a frantic search for more than 100 people trapped in the rubble, authorities said.

The Saints Academy college in Plateau state’s Busa Buji community collapsed shortly after students, many of whom were 15 years old or younger, arrived for classes.

A total of 154 students were initially trapped in the rubble, but Plateau police spokesperson Alfred Alabo later said 132 of them had been rescued and were being treated for injuries in various hospitals. He said 22 students died. An earlier report by local media had said at least 12 people were killed.

Dozens of villagers gathered near the school, some weeping and others offering to help, as excavators combed through the debris from the part of the building that had caved in.

One woman was seen wailing and attempting to go closer to the rubble as others held her back.

Nigeria’s National Emergency Management Agency said rescue and health workers as well as security forces had been deployed at the scene immediately after the collapse, launching a search for the trapped students.

“To ensure prompt medical attention, the government has instructed hospitals to prioritize treatment without documentation or payment,” Plateau state’s commissioner for information, Musa Ashoms, said in a statement.

The state government blamed the tragedy on the school’s “weak structure and location near a riverbank.” It urged schools facing similar issues to shut down.

Building collapses are becoming common in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with more than a dozen such incidents recorded in the last two years. Authorities often blame such disasters on a failure to enforce building safety regulations and on poor maintenance.