No immediate confirmation from Israel, which is trying to prevent Assad’s strategic weapons from falling into hostile hands; Syria protests IDF presence in buffer zone at UN
Israel launched a series of strikes early Saturday targeting military sites in and around Damascus, including rocket depots buried under a mountain, according to a Syrian war monitor
The strikes are the latest since rebels toppled Bashar al-Assad nearly a week ago.
Earlier this week, Israel began a major operation to destroy Syria’s strategic military capabilities, including chemical weapons, missiles, air defenses, air force and navy, to prevent them from falling into hostile hands.
Saturday’s strikes appeared to be aimed at ending that operation.
There was no immediate comment from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), although it said earlier this week that it had already destroyed about 80 percent of Syria’s capabilities and would continue to do so.
The Israeli strikes “destroyed a scientific institute” and other related military facilities in Barzeh, north of Damascus, and targeted a “military airport” in the capital’s countryside, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
The strikes also targeted “Scud ballistic missile depots” and launchers in the Qalamun area, as well as “rockets, depots and tunnels under the mountain,” according to the SOHR, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
According to Syrian sources, Israeli occupation aircraft launched airstrikes last night targeting military barracks near the town of Kafra, north of Aleppo, Syria. pic.twitter.com/FhmcBEvR9f
” Quds News Network (@QudsNen) December 14, 2024
The Observatory said several rounds of strikes targeted “military sites of former regime forces, as part of the destruction of what remains of the future Syrian army’s capabilities.”
SOHR, which is operated by a single person, is often accused by Syrian war analysts of false reporting, inflating casualty numbers and even fabricating information.
On Friday, Israeli airstrikes targeted “a missile base atop Mount Qasioun in Damascus,” the group said, as well as an airport in the southern province of Sweida and “defense and research laboratories in Masyaf” in Hama province.
The Assad regime fell on Sunday after a lightning offensive by rebel forces.
He was allied with the Iranian regime and part of the so-called Axis of Resistance against Israel.
For many years, Syria was used as a route for Iranian weapons destined for terrorist groups, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, with which Israel reached a fragile ceasefire last month.
Israel feared that after the fall of the Assad regime, weapons from the former Syrian army could fall into the hands of hostile forces in the country, as well as the Iranian-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In a message to the new regime emerging in Syria under rebel groups, many of which were initially associated with al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel would seek to establish relations but would not hesitate to strike if doing so threatened the Jewish state.
In a move that drew some international condemnation, Israel also advanced into a U.N.-patrolled buffer zone in the Golan Heights, just hours after rebels led by the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham seized Damascus.
Israel has said it will not get involved in the Syrian conflict and that its seizure of the buffer zone established in 1974 was a defensive measure.
Israel said its air strikes would continue for days, but told the U.N.
Security Council that it was not intervening in the Syrian conflict.
It said it had taken “limited and temporary measures” only to protect its security.
On Thursday, U.N.chief Antonio Guterres expressed concern about “extensive violations” of Syrian sovereignty and Israeli strikes in the country, his spokesman said.
Meanwhile, Syria’s U.N. representative called on the Security Council to take steps to force Israel to immediately cease its attacks on Syrian territory and withdraw from the buffer zone.
In identical letters to the council and Guterres obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, Syrian Ambassador Koussay Aldahhak said he was acting “at the behest of my government” in making the demands.
It appears to have been the first letter to the U.N.
from Syria’s new interim government.
However, Aldahhak represented Assad and the letters were stamped with the symbol of the former regime.
The letters were dated Dec.
9, days after rebels overthrew President Assad and ended the Assad family’s more than 50-year authoritarian rule in Syria.
“At a time when the Syrian Arab Republic is witnessing a new phase in its history, in which its people aspire to establish a state of freedom, equality and the rule of law and to achieve their hopes for prosperity and stability, the Israeli occupation army has penetrated new areas of Syrian territory in Mount Hermon and Quneitra province,” Ambassador Aldahhak wrote.
Israel controls and annexed the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War.
The 1974 Disengagement Agreement between Israel and Syria established a demilitarized buffer zone between the two countries, monitored by a U.N. peacekeeping force known as UNDOF.
In a letter to the Security Council circulated on Friday, also written on Dec. 9, Israel’s U.N. Ambassador Danny Danon said his country had taken “limited and temporary measures” by temporarily deploying troops in the area of separation “to prevent armed groups from threatening Israeli territory.”
Published in 12/14/2024 16h13
Text adapted by AI (Grok) and translated via Google API in the English version. Images from public image libraries or credits in the caption.
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