Israel carries out dozens of air strikes across Syria, reports say

Syrian media reviews say Israeli warplanes have carried out dozens of assaults throughout the nation, together with within the capital, Damascus.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) mentioned there have been greater than 100 strikes on navy targets.

A analysis centre with suspected hyperlinks to chemical weapon manufacturing was among the many websites hit, in accordance native media reviews.

Israel says it’s performing to cease weapons falling “into the hands of extremists” following the overthrow of the Assad regime.

Meanwhile, the UN Secuirty Council is assembly to debate the scenario within the nation following the downfall of President Bashar al-Assad.

The SOHR says there have been tons of of Israeli air strikes previously two days, together with on a website in Damascus mentioned to have been used for rocket improvement by Iranian scientists.

The strikes come because the UN’s chemical watchdog warns authorities in Syria to make sure that suspected stockpiles of chemical weapons are protected.

According to the UN’s chemical watchdog, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), a chemical weapon is a chemical used to trigger intentional dying or hurt by means of its poisonous properties, exterior.

The use of chemical weapons is prohibited below worldwide humanitarian regulation whatever the presence of a legitimate navy goal, as the results of such weapons are indiscriminate by nature.

It just isn’t identified the place or what number of chemical weapons Syria has, however former President Bashar al-Assad is believed to have saved stockpiles and that the declaration he had made was incomplete.

Syria signed the OPCW’s Chemical Weapons Certificate in 2013, a month after a chemical weapons assault on suburbs of the capital, Damascus, that concerned the nerve agent sarin and left greater than 1,400 folks lifeless.

The horrific footage of victims convulsing in agony shocked the world. Western powers mentioned the assault may solely have been carried out by the federal government, however Assad blamed the opposition.

Despite the OPCW and the UN destroying all 1,300 tonnes of chemical compounds that the Syrian authorities declared, chemical weapons assaults within the nation nonetheless continued.

BBC evaluation 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 mentioned it had contacted Syria “with a view to emphasising the paramount importance of ensuring the safety and security of all chemical weapons related materials and facilities” within the nation.

Also on Monday, the Israeli navy launched pictures of its troops who crossed from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights into the demilitarised buffer zone in Syria the place UN peacekeepers are primarily based.

It comes a day after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu introduced that the navy had temporarily seized control of the so-called Area of Separation, saying the 1974 disengagement settlement with Syria had “collapsed” with the insurgent takeover of the nation.

The Golan Heights is a rocky plateau about 60km (40 miles) south-west of Damascus.

Israel seized the Golan from Syria within the closing phases of the 1967 Six-Day War and unilaterally annexed it in 1981. The transfer was not recognised internationally, though the US did so unilaterally in 2019.

Speaking at a information convention on Monday, Saar mentioned the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was solely making “a very limited and temporary step” taken for “security reasons”.

He additionally claimed that Israel had no real interest in meddling in inner Syrian affairs and was involved solely with defending its residents.

Defence Minister Israel Katz in the meantime mentioned the Israeli navy would “destroy heavy strategic weapons” – together with missile and air defence methods.

The newest strikes by Israel come after Syrian insurgent fighters captured the capital, Damascus, and toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime. He and his father had been in energy within the nation since 1971.

Forces led by the Islamist opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) entered Damascus within the early hours of Sunday, earlier than showing on state tv to declare that Syria was now “free”.

On Sunday, Netanyahu branded the collapse of the Assad regime a “historic day in the Middle East”.

The Assad regime obtained a lot assist from Hezbollah and Russia within the nation’s brutal civil conflict. With Hezbollah concerned within the Israel-Gaza conflict and cross-border air strikes between Israel and Lebanon, and Russia expending large assets on its invasion of Ukraine, HTS, together with different insurgent teams in Syria, had been in a position to seize on the event and had been finally in a position to seize giant swathes of Syria.

During the 2011 Syrian rebellion, Israel made the calculation that Assad, regardless of being an ally of each Iran and Hezbollah, was a greater wager than what may observe his regime.

On Sunday, Netanyahu insisted Israel would “send a hand of peace” to Syrians who wished to dwell in peace with Israel.

He mentioned the IDF presence within the buffer zone was a “temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found”.

“If we can establish neighbourly relations and peaceful relations with the new forces emerging in Syria, that’s our desire. But if we do not, we will do whatever it takes to defend the State of Israel and the border of Israel,” he mentioned.

Israel is more likely to be extra delicate over the Golan Heights, since HTS chief Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani’s household has roots there. Thousands of Israeli settlers now dwell within the space alongside about 20,000 Syrians, most of them Druze, who stayed on after it was captured.

Israeli strikes in Syria are nothing new. It has beforehand acknowledged finishing up tons of of strikes in recent times on targets in Syria that it says are linked to Iran and allied armed teams equivalent to Hezbollah.

The Israeli strikes in Syria have reportedly been extra frequent because the begin of the conflict in Gaza in October 2023, in response to cross-border assaults on northern Israel by Hezbollah and different teams in Lebanon and Syria.

Just final month, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group, reported {that a} set of strikes hit a weapons depot and different places in and round an space close to Palmyra the place households of Iran-backed militia fighters had been, killing 68 Syrian and foreign fighters.