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Israel carries out dozens of airstrikes across Syria, reports say


Watch: Explosions at Syrian army base near Qamishli

Syrian media reports say Israeli warplanes have carried out dozens of strikes across the country, including the capital Damascus.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said there were more than 100 attacks on military targets.

According to local media reports, a research center with alleged links to chemical weapons production was among the sites attacked.

Israel says it is acting to prevent weapons from falling “into the hands of extremists” following the overthrow of the Assad regime.

A map showing the location of Israeli strikes in Syria since December 8.

On Monday, the UN Security Council met to discuss the situation in the country following the fall of President Bashar al-Assad and said they would work on a statement in the coming days.

“I think the council was more or less united on the need to preserve the territorial integrity and unity of Syria, ensure the protection of civilians and ensure that humanitarian aid reaches the population in need,” the Russian ambassador told the UN, Vassily Nebenzia. he told reporters.

The SOHR says there have been hundreds of Israeli airstrikes in the past two days, including on a site in Damascus said to have been used for rocket development by Iranian scientists.

The attacks come as the UN chemical watchdog warns authorities in Syria to ensure suspected stockpiles of chemical weapons are safe.

According to the UN chemical watchdog, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a chemical weapon is a chemical substance used to cause intentional death or harm through its toxic properties.

The use of chemical weapons is prohibited by international humanitarian law regardless of the presence of a valid military target, as the effects of such weapons are indiscriminate in nature.

It is not known where or how many chemical weapons Syria has, but it is believed that former President Bashar al-Assad maintained stockpiles and that the declaration he had made was incomplete.

Syria signed the OPCW Chemical Weapons Certificate in 2013, a month after a chemical weapons attack in the suburbs of the capital, Damascus, involving the nerve agent sarin and leaving more than 1,400 people dead.

The horrific images of the victims convulsing in agony shocked the world. Western powers said the attack could only have been carried out by the government, but Assad blamed the opposition.

Even though the OPCW and UN destroyed the 1,300 tons of chemicals declared by the Syrian government, chemical weapons attacks in the country continued.

BBC analysis in 2018 confirmed that between 2014 and 2018, Chemical weapons were used in the Syrian civil war at least 106 times.

On Monday, the OPCW said it had contacted Syria “with a view to emphasizing the paramount importance of ensuring the security of all chemical weapons-related materials and facilities” in the country.

Also on Monday, the Israeli military released photographs of its troops crossing from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights into the demilitarized buffer zone in Syria, where U.N. peacekeepers are based.

It comes a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that the army had temporarily took control of the so-called Area of ​​Separation, saying that the 1974 withdrawal agreement with Syria had “collapsed” with the rebel takeover of the country.

The Golan Heights are a rocky plateau about 60 kilometers (40 mi) southwest of Damascus.

Israel seized the Golan from Syria in the final stages of the 1967 Six-Day War and unilaterally annexed it in 1981. The move was not recognized internationally, although the United States did so unilaterally in 2019.

At a press conference on Monday, Saar said the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were only taking “a very limited and temporary step” for “security reasons.”

He also stated that Israel had no interest in meddling in Syria’s internal affairs and was only concerned with defending its citizens.

Meanwhile, Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli military would “destroy heavy strategic weapons,” including missile and air defense systems.

A map showing the location of the Golan Heights, an area between Syria and Israel.

Israel’s latest moves come after Syrian rebel fighters captured the capital Damascus and toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime. He and his father had been in power in the country since 1971.

Forces led by the Islamist opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) entered Damascus in the early hours of Sunday, before appearing on state television to declare that Syria was now “free.”

On Tuesday, HTS said the incoming authorities will publish a list with the “names of the highest officials involved in the torture of the Syrian people.”

The group said it will offer rewards for information about “senior military and security officials involved in war crimes.”

The Assad regime received much support from Hezbollah and Russia in the country’s brutal civil war. With Hezbollah involved in the war between Israel and Gaza and in cross-border airstrikes between Israel and Lebanon, and Russia spending enormous resources on its invasion of Ukraine, HTS, along with other rebel groups in Syria, were able to seize the opportunity and ultimately , capable of capturing large areas of Syria.

During the 2011 Syrian uprising, Israel made the calculation that Assad, despite being an ally of both Iran and Hezbollah, was a better bet than could follow its regime.

On Sunday, Netanyahu called the collapse of the Assad regime a “historic day in the Middle East” and insisted that Israel would “send a hand of peace” to Syrians who wanted to live in peace with Israel.

He said the IDF presence in the buffer zone was a “temporary defensive position until an adequate agreement is found.”

“If we can establish neighborly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that is our wish. But if we do not, we will do whatever is necessary to defend the State of Israel and Israel’s border,” he said.

Israel is likely to be more sensitive regarding the Golan Heights, as HTS leader Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani’s family has roots there. Thousands of Israeli settlers now live in the area alongside some 20,000 Syrians, most of them Druze, who stayed after their capture.

Israeli attacks in Syria are nothing new. It has previously acknowledged carrying out hundreds of attacks in recent years against targets in Syria that it claims are linked to Iran and allied armed groups such as Hezbollah.

Israeli strikes in Syria have reportedly been more frequent since the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023, in response to cross-border attacks on northern Israel by Hezbollah and other groups in Lebanon and Syria.

Last month, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, reported that a series of strikes hit a weapons depot and other locations in and around an area near Palmyra where They found families of militiamen backed by Iran. , killing 68 Syrian and foreign fighters.



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