Syria accuses Israel of ‘chaos and destruction’ after military headquarters attacked

Syria’s interim President thanked mediators for ‘saving the region from an unknown fate’, after accusing Israel of ‘wide-scale targeting’ of citizens in strikes on military targets in Damascus.

Smoke billows following Israeli strikes near the Syrian army and defence ministry headquarters in Damascus on Wednesday. Picture: Rami al Sayed/AFP

Syria’s interim President has hailed US, Arab and Turkish mediation for saving the region from an “unknown fate”, as he attacked Israel for striking the country’s military headquarters and Ministry of Defence in Damascus.

“The Israeli entity resorted to a wide-scale targeting of civilian and government facilities,” Ahmed al-Sharaa said in a televised address after the strikes.

He accused Israel of attempting to cause “chaos and destruction” which he said led to a “significant complication of the situation and pushed matters to a large-scale escalation, except for the effective intervention of American, Arab and Turkish mediation, which saved the region from an unknown fate”.

In his first public appearance since Israel’s attacks on Syria’s capital which killed an estimated 15 people, Mr Sharaa said his people were not afraid to fight, and vowed accountability for anyone who “abuse our Druze people”.

He told the country’s minority peoples: “We reject any attempt to drag you into hands of an external party.

“We are not among those who fear the war. We have put the interests of the Syrians before chaos and destruction.”

The attack on Damascus was captured live on state television and marks a major escalation in the conflict between the two countries, with the US voicing serious concerns about the situation.

Before the strikes, Jerusalem had warned Mr Sharaa’s Islamist-led government to leave the Druze minority alone in its Sweida heartland.

Syria’s Ministry of Health told state media the attacks had killed 15 people and injured 34 others.

החלו המכות הכואבות pic.twitter.com/1kJFFXoiua

— ישראל כ”ץ Israel Katz (@Israel_katz) July 16, 2025

Hours after the strikes, Syrian government officials and leaders in the Druze religious minority announced a renewed ceasefire.

Convoys of government forces began withdrawing from the city of Sweida but it was not immediately clear if the agreement, announced by Syria’s Interior Ministry and in a video message by a Druze religious leader, would hold.

A previous ceasefire announced on Tuesday quickly fell apart, and a prominent Druze leader, Sheikh Hikmat Al-Hijri, disavowed the new agreement.

Israeli strikes reportedly continued after the ceasefire announcement.

Smoke rises from an Israeli air strike on the Syrian Defence Ministry in Damascus. Picture: SANA via AP

The escalation in Syria began with tit-for-tat kidnappings and attacks between local Sunni Bedouin tribes and Druze armed factions in the southern province of Sweida.

Government forces that intervened to restore order clashed with the Druze militias, but also in some cases attacked civilians.

The violence appeared to be the most serious threat yet to efforts by Syria’s new rulers to consolidate control of the country since the ousting of Bashar al-Assad.

In his televised address, Mr Sharaa called the Druze an integral part of Syria and assured the Druze: “We affirm that protecting your rights and freedoms is among our top priorities.

“We assigned local factions and Druze spiritual leaders the responsibility of maintaining security in (Sweida), recognising the gravity of the situation and the need to avoid dragging the country” into a new war.

Syria’s new, primarily Sunni Muslim, authorities have faced suspicion from religious and ethnic minorities, especially after clashes between government forces and pro-Assad armed groups in March spiralled into sectarian revenge attacks.

Hundreds of civilians from the Alawite religious minority, to which Assad belongs, were killed.

No official casualty figures have been released for the latest fighting since Monday, when the Interior Ministry said 30 people had been killed.

UK-based war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said more than 300 people had been killed as of Wednesday morning, including four children, eight women and 165 soldiers and security forces.

Israel has launched dozens of strikes targeting government troops and convoys heading into Sweida, before attacking the Damascus military sites in strikes that killed 15 people and injured 34.

Another Israeli strike hit near the presidential palace in the hills outside Damascus.

Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said in a post on X after the initial Damascus air strike that the “painful blows have begun”.

Israel has taken an aggressive stance toward Syria’s new leaders, saying it does not want Islamist militants near its borders.

Israeli forces have seized a UN-patrolled buffer zone on Syrian territory along the border with the Golan Heights and launched hundreds of air strikes on military sites in Syria.

Mr Katz said in a statement that the Israeli army “will continue to attack regime forces until they withdraw from the area – and will also soon raise the bar of responses against the regime if the message is not understood”.

The aftermath of an Israeli air strike on Syria’s Defence Ministry headquarters in Damascus. Picture: Getty Images

An Israeli military official who spoke on condition of anonymity, in line with regulations, said the army was preparing for a “multitude of scenarios” and that a brigade, normally comprising thousands of soldiers, was being pulled out of Gaza and sent to the Golan Heights.

Syria’s Defence Ministry had earlier blamed militias in the Druze-majority area of Sweida for violating the ceasefire agreement reached on Tuesday.

The Druze religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam. More than half of the roughly one million Druze worldwide live in Syria. Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed in 1981.

Videos surfaced on social media of Syria government-affiliated fighters forcibly shaving the moustaches of Druze sheiks and stepping on Druze flags and pictures of religious clerics. Other videos showed Druze fighters beating captured government forces and posing by their bodies. AP reporters in the area saw burned and looted houses.

The observatory said at least 27 people were killed in “field executions”.

Druze in the Golan gathered along the border fence to protest the violence against Druze in Syria.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that Washington was “very concerned” about the Israel-Syria violence, which he attributed to a “misunderstanding”, and had been in touch with both sides in an effort to restore calm.