WASHINGTON, July 16. /TASS/. The Trump administration has asked Israel to halt its strikes on Syrian government targets and to open direct talks with Damascus, a senior US official told Axios on Wednesday.

"We told the Israelis to stand down and take a breath," the senior US official said, adding that the administration is pushing for direct talks between Israel and Syria to solve the crisis, it said.

On Wednesday, Israel launched several airstrikes on Damascus. The first hit the area where the General Staff of the Syrian Armed Forces is located, and the subsequent ones struck the General Staff building and, according to media reports, the presidential palace.

The Israeli army confirmed bombing of the Syrian capital and linked it to worsening of the situation in the south of the country, where clashes have been taking place since July 13 with the participation of local Druze mountaineers supported by Israel.

The Druze are an isolated Arabic-speaking ethnic and religious group whose representatives live in Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan. There are 700,000 Druze in Syria, the third largest religious and ethnic minority after the Kurds and Alawites.