Israel says it has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syria, targeting ‘strategic weapons stockpiles’

• Israel has launched hundreds of airstrikes on Syria since Bashar Assad’s ouster.
• Its forces have also advanced into the Golan Heights, a previously demilitarized zone in southwestern Syria.
• Israel’s defense minister said it intended to create a “defense zone free of weapons and terrorist threats in southern Syria.”

Israel says it has launched hundreds of airstrikes on Syria in the days since Bashar Assad’s regime collapsed.

On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces said it had “struck most of the strategic weapons stockpiles in Syria” in 48 hours as part of a push to stop the weapons “falling into the hands of terrorist elements.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday welcomed the toppling of Assad but said the moment is “fraught with significant dangers.”

Assad’s downfall followed a surprise rebel offensive led by the Islamist opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which traces its roots to Al-Qaeda.

Per Tuesday’s IDF statement, the Israeli military had conducted strikes on targets including antiaircraft batteries, Syrian Air Force airfields, and weapons production sites.

It said the strikes took out “numerous” strategic assets, including cruise and Scud missiles, tanks, radars, and attack helicopters.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which gathers data from on-the-ground sources in Syria, said on Tuesday that it had documented nearly 310 Israeli airstrikes on Syrian territory since Assad’s government collapsed on December 8.

The Israeli navy also hit two ports, one in Al-Bayda and one in Latakia, the IDF said.

The IDF did not say how many ships were struck, but Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said that the mission had been a “great success” and that the navy had destroyed the Syrian fleet overnight, CNN reported.

The IDF declined to clarify what proportion of Syria’s military capability had been taken out when approached by Business Insider for comment.

Katz said that Israel intended to create a “sterile defense zone free of weapons and terrorist threats in southern Syria,” adding that it’s “in order to prevent terrorism in Syria from taking root,” per The Guardian’s translation.

The US and Turkey have also been reported to be carrying out airstrikes in Syria since Assad’s fall.

Washington has targeted ISIS camps and operatives in Syria with precision strikes, President Joe Biden said on Sunday.

Jonathan Lord, a former political-military analyst at the Pentagon, previously told Business Insider the US military was hitting as many targets as possible as it was “rightly worried that ISIS could slip through the cracks in the chaos.”

For its part, Ankara has reportedly launched a drone strike on a military site in an area held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Force, which it views as a terror group.

Troops on the ground

The strikes come as Netanyahu announced that he had sent forces into the Golan Heights, a formerly demilitarized buffer zone in southwestern Syria.

In a video address on Sunday, Netanyahu described this as a “temporary defensive position” designed “to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel.”

Israel has denied reports that its forces have advanced beyond the buffer zone.

An anonymous Syrian source previously told Reuters that troops had reached Qatana, a town close to the Syrian capital Damascus.

Business Insider could not independently confirm the report. The IDF declined to comment.

Several Arab countries have criticized the move into the Golan Heights.

Egypt’s foreign ministry said on Monday that it constituted “an exploitation of the state of fluidity and vacuum in Syria to occupy more Syrian territories,” the Egypt Independent reported.

The Arab League said that Israel was “taking advantage of the developments in the internal situation in Syria,” per CNN.

Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesperson for the UN Secretary-General, confirmed at a press briefing on Monday that the Israeli military had entered the Golan Heights and was stationed in at least three locations there.

Dujarric said that peacekeepers at the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force had told Israel that such actions would violate the 1974 disengagement agreement and that there should be no military forces or activities in the area.

Netanyahu said that the agreement had “collapsed” and that “the Syrian army abandoned its positions.”