Several explosions rang out on Sunday in ammunition warehouses belonging to Bashar al-Assad’s army near the Syrian capital Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH) said.
“Violent explosions resounded around the capital Damascus today, possibly due to an Israeli strike,” said the NGO.
Questioned by AFP in Jerusalem on Sunday, the Israeli army, which has repeatedly targeted sites of the ousted Syrian president’s army in recent weeks, claimed “not to be at the origin” of these explosions. .
The explosions took place “in ammunition depots belonging to the forces of the former regime, near the town of Kiswé in the suburbs of Damascus”, according to the Observatory, which did not report any casualties.
The OSDH reported a “thick cloud of smoke and violent shaking in the surrounding area”.
Since the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, driven from power on December 8 by a coalition of rebels, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on military sites in Syria, claiming to want to prevent the arsenal of the deposed power from falling between the hands of the new authorities.
On January 3, Israeli strikes targeted military sites of the former regime south of Aleppo (north), according to the OSDH.
At the end of December, the Observatory reported the death of 11 people in an explosion in an arms depot near Damascus. Israel had denied any involvement.
During Syria’s civil war that began in 2011, Israel carried out hundreds of strikes against positions of the Assad regime’s army and its allies, including Lebanese Hezbollah and Iran.
As soon as the Bashar al-Assad regime fell, Israel sent troops to a demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan, in southwest Syria, on the edge of the part of this plateau occupied by Israel since the 1967 war. and annexed in 1981.
The new Syrian leader Ahmad el-Chareh denounced the intrusion of Israeli forces in mid-December, affirming however that Syria was too “exhausted” by the war to engage in a new conflict.
With AFP
