Syria updates: Israel fires more than 100 airstrikes on military targets
Israel has launched a barrage of military strikes across Syria, including a chemical weapons production facility. Follow updates.
Israel has conducted more than 100 airstrikes on military targets in Syria, including a research centre Western countries suspect has links to chemical weapons production in Damascus.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitor, said the Israeli military conducted overnight strikes on multiple locations spanning coastal and southern Syria.
“Since the initial hours after the announcement of the fall of the former regime, Israel began launching intensive air strikes, deliberately destroying weapons and ammunitions depots,” it said.
Raids also destroyed boats from the former Syrian navy in the sea port of Latakia, he said.
Israel, which borders Syria, has sent troops into a buffer zone on the east of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights after Bashar al-Assad’s fall, in what Foreign Minister Gideon Saar described as a “limited and temporary step” for “security reasons”.
Since its war with Hamas in Gaza erupted on October 7, 2023, Israel ramped up its air strikes on Iranian-linked targets in Syria.
It comes as Hamas congratulated the Syrian people on toppling president Bashar al-Assad, and called for unity in the country.
“Hamas congratulates the brotherly Syrian people on their success in achieving their aspirations for freedom and justice, and we call on all components of the Syrian people to unite their ranks,” the Palestinian militant group said in a statement.
Syria under Bashar al-Assad was a key component of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”, a loose alliance of forces united in their opposition to Israel, which included Lebanon’s Hezbollah as well as Hamas.
Assad fled Syria as Islamist-led rebels swept into Damascus, triggering celebrations across the country and beyond at the end of his oppressive rule.
Russian news agencies said that Assad and his family were in Moscow.
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