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New Israeli strikes said to target Syrian military sites, underground missile bunkers.
No immediate confirmation from Israel, which is trying to stop Assad’s strategic weapons from falling into hostile hands; Syria protests to UN against IDF presence in buffer zone.
Israel launched a series of strikes early Saturday targeting military sites in Damascus and its countryside, including rocket depots buried deep under a mountain, a Syrian war monitor said, in the latest such raids since rebels brought down Bashar al-Assad almost a week ago.
Earlier in the week Israel launched a major operation to destroy the Syrian military’s strategic military capabilities, including chemical weapons, missiles, air defenses, air force and navy, in a bid to prevent them from falling into the hands of hostile elements.
The early Saturday strikes appeared to be aimed at completing the effort.
There was no immediate comment from the IDF, though earlier in the week it said it had so far destroyed some 80% of Syrian capabilities and would continue to act.
“Israeli strikes destroyed a scientific institute” and other related military facilities in Barzeh, in northern Damascus, and targeted a “military airport” in the capital’s countryside, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said.
Strikes also targeted “Scud ballistic missile warehouses” and launchers in the Qalamun area, as well as “rockets, depots and tunnels under the mountain,” according to the Britain-based Observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
The Observatory said several rounds of strikes targeted “military sites of the former regime forces, as part of destroying what is left of the future Syrian army’s capabilities.”
SOHR, run by a single person, has regularly been accused by Syrian war analysts of false reporting and inflating casualty numbers as well as inventing them wholesale.
Israeli airstrikes on Friday targeted “a missile base at the top of Damascus’s Mount Qasioun,” the group said, as well as an airport in southern Sweida province and “defense and research labs in Masyaf,” in Hama province.
The Assad regime, which fell on Sunday after a lightning offensive by rebel forces, was an ally of the Iranian regime, and a part of its so-called Axis of Resistance against Israel.
For many years, Syria was used as a throughway for Iranian weapons, en route to terror groups including Hezbollah in Lebanon, with which Israel entered a shaky ceasefire last month.
Israel feared that following the collapse of the Assad regime, the former Syrian army’s weapons could fall into the hands of hostile forces in the country, as well as the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
In a message to the new regime taking shape in Syria under the rebel groups, many of which were originally associated with al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday that Israel would seek to establish relations, but wouldn’t hesitate to attack if it threatens the Jewish state.
In a move that has drawn some international condemnation, Israel also moved into a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone on the Golan Heights just hours after the rebels, led by Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, took Damascus.
Israel has said it will not become involved in the conflict in Syria and that its seizure of the buffer zone established in 1974 was a defensive move.
Israel said its airstrikes would carry on for days, but told the UN Security Council that it was not intervening in Syria’s conflict. It said it had taken “limited and temporary measures” solely to protect its security.
On Thursday, UN chief Antonio Guterres expressed concern over “extensive violations” of Syrian sovereignty and the Israeli strikes in the country, his spokesman said.
Meanwhile, Syria’s representative at the UN called on the Security Council to take action to compel Israel to immediately stop its attacks on Syrian territory and withdraw from the buffer zone.
In identical letters to the council and Guterres obtained Friday by The Associated Press, Syria’s UN Ambassador Koussay Aldahhak said he was acting “on instructions from my government” in making the demands.
It appeared to be the first letter to the UN from Syria’s new interim government. However Aldahhak represented Assad and the letters were filed with the symbol of the former regime.
The letters were dated December 9, days after rebels ousted president Assad and ended his family’s more than 50-year authoritarian rule of 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 additional areas of Syrian territory in Mount Hermon and Quneitra Governorate,” ambassador Aldahhak wrote.
Israel controls and annexed the Golan Heights that it captured from Syria during the 1967 Six Day War. The Disengagement Agreement of 1974 between Israel and Syria established a demilitarized buffer zone between the two countries, monitored by a UN peacekeeping force known as UNDOF.
In a letter to the Security Council circulated Friday which was also written on December 9, Israel’s UN Ambassador Danny Danon said his country had taken “limited and temporary measures,” deploying troops temporarily in the separation area “to prevent armed groups from threatening Israeli territory.”
Source: Times of Israel