SANA

An Israeli strike on Damascus killed five people in a building where "Iran-aligned leaders" were meeting on Saturday, a war monitor said, as regional tensions soar over the Israel-Hamas war.

Israel launched artillery strikes on Syria Sunday morning, the Israeli army announced, after several rockets were fired from there and landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

"In response to the rockets fired from Syria at Israel earlier today, IDF Artillery is currently striking in Syrian territory," the military tweeted.

Here are the highlights of events related to the war in Ukraine over the past 24 hours:

Syria has recognized the DPR and LPR

Syria has decided to recognize the independence and sovereignty of the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, SANA news agency and Syrian state television reported, citing an official source from the foreign ministry.

Dust clouds have covered the skies of southeastern provinces, while the visibility range has decreased due to the dust transportation from Syria.

Layers of dust coated vehicles and apartment balconies in the provinces of Şırnak, Bingöl, Mardin and Tunceli late on May 23.

Four Syrian soldiers were killed and three others wounded in an Israeli air strike, a Syrian military source told state news agency SANA on Wednesday.

"The Israeli enemy carried out an air assault at dawn... targeting several positions around Damascus," the military source said.

Israel carried out air strikes on government-held positions in Syria on Saturday, the state news agency SANA said, without reporting any casualties.

"The Israeli enemy launched an aerial assault from the direction of northern Lebanon targeting a number of positions in the central region," SANA reported, citing a military source.

Syria's Higher Judicial Committee for Presidential Elections informed that the polls in the presidential election have closed.

"The election is over, the vote count has begun," the committee stated, quoted by the SANA news agency.

The Syrian regime on March 31 claimed that Israeli fighter jets carried missile strikes in Homs province.

The SANA news agency affiliated with the Assad regime said: "At 20:25 of March 31, the Israeli warplanes launched a number of missiles, from over Lebanon, into the direction of eastern Homs.

Turkey's Defense Ministry said on March 2 that a warplane of the Syrian regime's forces had been shot down in the course of a Turkish-led military offensive launched in northwest Syria to push back the forces of Bashar al-Assad.

The downed jet was described as an L-39 warplane in the ministry's statement.

Syrian regime forces on Jan. 28 entered a key rebel-held town in the country's northwest after surrounding it on three sides, sending thousands of people fleeing to safety in areas farther north, a war monitor and state media said.