More than thirty Israeli strikes targeted military sites including tunnels in Damascus and its suburbs, almost a week after the capture of the Syrian capital by an armed coalition which overthrew Bashar al-Assad, an NGO said on Saturday. Since the flight of deposed President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday, Israel has launched hundreds of strikes against military sites in Syria, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH).
“Israel carried out 35 cluster missile strikes with the aim of completely destroying tunnels under the mountains”indicated the NGO, based in the United Kingdom and with a vast network of sources inside Syria. “These tunnels contained warehouses for ballistic missiles, munitions, mortar shells, and other military equipment”according to the OSDH. On Saturday evening, it also reported Israeli strikes against other arms depots in the Qalamoun region, near Damascus, but also near Deraa and Soueida in the south.
Earlier, the OSDH had indicated that a “scientific institute” and other military positions in Barzé, on the northeastern edge of Damascus, had been destroyed by Israeli strikes. They had also targeted a “military airport” in the surroundings of the city, according to the NGO which adds that these series of strikes against “the military sites of the old regime” aim to “destroy what remains of the military capabilities of the next Syrian army”.
More than 430 keystrokes
On Friday, the Israeli Air Force also targeted a “missile base on Mount Qassioun in Damascus”added the OSDH, as well as an airport in the region of Soueida and “research and defense laboratories in Masyaf”in the province of Hama. Since the fall of Assad, Israel has intensified its strikes on its neighbor, with the OSDH recording 430 strikes in less than a week.
Furthermore, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the army to “prepare to stay” all winter in the buffer zone located on the edge of the part of the Syrian Golan occupied by Israel. Israeli troops entered the buffer zone just after Assad's fall. The UN denounced «violation» of the 1974 disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel.
On Saturday, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the leader of the Islamist-dominated coalition that took power in Syria and now calls himself by his real name, Ahmad al-Chareh, denounced the incursion. He nevertheless affirmed that his country was too “exhausted” by war to engage in a new conflict.
