Israel raids military sites in Latakia, Tartous: Monitor
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) says the attacks targeted the port of Latakia as well as weapons warehouses in the Tartous governorate.
The raid on Tartous caused stored missiles to launch and explode, the UK-based group said.
There were raids elsewhere, too. They include:
- Air defence sites and radars in Tartous
- Radar site in Latakia
- Army camps and the military airport in the city of Deir Az Zor
SOHR says it has documented more than 352 Israeli air attacks in 13 of Syria’s provinces since al-Assad’s fall on Sunday. The Israeli military earlier said it had launched more than 480 attacks in 48 hours.
Israel seizing the moment to ‘debilitate’ Syria’s defences
As we’ve been reporting, Israel has waged a major air offensive in Syria since the fall of al-Assad, hitting more than 500 targets, including airfields and weapons sites, while also seizing more territory near the occupied Golan Heights.
Daniel Levy, a former Israeli negotiator and president of the US/Middle East Project, says Israel is taking advantage of the moment to “debilitate” any future Syrian authority “of its ability to defend itself”.
“I think the signal Israel thinks it’s sending is: ‘We’re here. We’re the regional policemen… We can act with impunity,'” said Levy.
For Israeli PM Netanyahu, who is on trial for corruption, moving Israeli forces further beyond the Golan is also a way to open up the possibility of permanent territorial gains, he added.
“Maybe Netanyahu would rather go down not as a criminal who also presided over the failure of October 7, but rather as someone who expanded Israel’s borders,” said Levy.
Israel’s attacks on Syria show its ‘changing regional role’
Israel’s response to the collapse of al-Assad’s government, including deployments in the Syria-controlled part of the occupied Golan Heights and a massive bombing campaign against the country’s military infrastructure, shows how Israel’s regional role has profoundly changed, says Rob Geist Pinfold, a scholar of international security at Durham University.
“Israel feels insecure – whether that’s true or not – and as a response to that insecurity what do they do? They take territory,” he told Al Jazeera. “We have seen that happen in Lebanon, we have seen that in Gaza, and now we’re seeing that happen in Syria.”
He added: “The irony here is that what we have in Syria is Israel basically creating a buffer zone to protect its original buffer zone which is the Golan Heights,” he added.
He also called the scale of Israeli strikes on Syria’s military infrastructure “unprecedented”.
“This shows that Israel is really changing its regional role,” he added. “Israel used to be a status-quo power … Now Israel is the revisionist power, it’s Israel that wants to change things.”
Israeli assaults ‘a mixture of both opportunism and strategy’
Since Bashar al-Assad’s dramatic flight to Moscow on Sunday, Israel has launched more than 480 air attacks on Syria, claiming this is necessary for its defence.
But it has been assaulting Syria with impunity since at least January 2013, when it bombed a Syrian weapons convoy. Since then, attacks have continued, with Israel typically claiming it was targeting positions belonging to Hezbollah and Iran.
In the process, according to observers, it has normalised for itself the idea of attacking a neighbouring state.
The attacks on Syria, said Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst with the Crisis Group, were “a mixture of both opportunism and strategy”. “I think what we’re seeing in reality is the strategy that Israel’s been developing since October 7: identify a threat or opportunity, deploy troops and then figure it out.”
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