Israel strengthens hold on Syrian buffer zone

Israel’s military said it bombed more than 350 sites in Syria during the previous 48 hours, targeting “most of the strategic weapons stockpiles” in the country.

Warplanes hit what Israel said were Syrian air defense systems, military airfields, missile depots, and dozens of weapons production sites in the cities of Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia, and Palmyra.

In naval operations overnight Monday, Israeli missile ships struck two Syrian navy facilities simultaneously -- Al-Bayda port and Latakia port -- where the army said 15 Syrian naval vessels were docked.

Israeli did not specify how many Syrian naval vessels were hit. The private security firm Ambrey said it had seen evidence that at least six Soviet-era Syrian navy missile ships were hit.

Israeli officials said earlier that Israel also targeted alleged chemical weapons sites.

India has evacuated 75 of its nationals from Syria, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday.

The evacuees, who were stranded in the Syrian town of Saida Zainab, have safely crossed over to Lebanon and will return by available commercial flights to India.

“The evacuation, coordinated by the embassies of India in Damascus and Beirut, was put into effect following our assessment of the security situation and requests from Indian nationals in Syria,” the External Affairs ministry said in a statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Tuesday that his country’s military launched an wave of airstrikes across Syria to destroy the toppled government’s leftover “military capabilities,” and said Israel wants relations with the new government emerging Syria.

Hours after Israeli warplanes pounded Syria, Netanyahu said Israeli doesn’t want to meddle in Syria’s internal affairs, but would take necessary steps to protect Israel’s security and prevent jihadi militants from seizing the Syrian army assets.

He warned that if the new Syrian government “allows Iran to re-establish itself in Syria or allows the transfer of Iranian weapons or any other weapons to Hezbollah, or attacks us -- we will respond forcefully and we will exact a heavy price from it.”

He spoke in a video statement recorded at the Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv, after his first day of testimony in his corruption trial.

A woman from Idlib province was among many Syrians gathering in Umayyad Square in Damascus to celebrate the fall of President Bashar Assad.

Amid the celebrations, 22-year-old Ahmed Jreida said a dark cloud still loomed. She shouted that the Israeli strikes have ruined the joy of ousting Assad.

“Why are you striking us? We just deposed a tyrant,” she said. “Give us peace. Leave us alone.”

In Umayyad Square in Damascus, Syrians celebrated the fall of President Bashar Assad for the third day on Tuesday despite Israeli airstrikes across the country. Insurgents who recently took control of the capital city tried to impose a new rule banning celebratory gunfire. There were a few violators, and much less deafening gunfire.

Protesters climbed the square’s central monument to wave the Syrian revolutionary flag. On the ground, crowds chanted: “Out with Bashar! Out with Bashar!” Assad fled to Russia over the weekend.

Demonstrators from different provinces marched in the square in groups, celebrating Assad’s fall. Men on motorcycles and horses paraded into the square.

Hamzeh Hamada, 22, said it was the first time he had gone out to a demonstration.

“We want the country to get better, to live in dignity and be like other countries that respect citizens’ rights and where there are no bribes,” he said.

Residents of northeast Syria in the area around Qamishli airport said Tuesday they heard explosions overnight after an airstrike hit trucks loaded with rockets and ammunition that were heading to a military base in Tartab.

“We don’t know the story. It was only in the morning when we realized they are trucks loaded with ammunition, leftovers of the former army, the regime,” said Ibrahim al-Thalaj, who lives near the base. He said residents assumed that the strikes were Israeli.

Israel has carried out a heavy wave of airstrikes across Syria targeting military infrastructure after Syrian insurgents toppled the government of Bashar Assad. However, Turkish security officials said Tuesday that the strike in Qamishli was carried out by Turkey, targeting weapons and ammunition that were abandoned by the Syrian army and seized by Syrian Kurdish militants.

The explosions lasted for over 20 minutes after the strike, and many houses in the surrounding area were damaged as a result, residents of the area said.

“We just felt a strike hitting. It hit the first one (truck) and we saw the other trucks retreating back, and from there rockets and shells started flying over,” said Hamid al-Asaad, an eyewitness from Qub al-Zeki village in Qamishli.

“We were sitting when these explosions started to hit the house,” said Mahmoud Hamza of Tartab. “It was hitting randomly and we didn’t know where it was coming from. ... Once we got out of our house, a rocket hit the house.”

There were no details released by the local Kurdish administration regarding the explosions, but members of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces blocked the road to the base.

The European Union’s top diplomat is concerned that Syria might violently fall apart like neighboring Iraq, or Libya and Afghanistan if its territorial integrity and the rights of minorities are not protected.

“The transition will present huge challenges in Syria and in the region,” EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas told European lawmakers on Tuesday. “There are legitimate concerns about the risks of sectarian violence, extremist resurgence and the governance vacuum, all of which must be averted.”

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“The rights of all Syrians, including those of many minority groups, must be protected,” she said. “It is crucial to preserve the territorial integrity of Syria, and to respect its independence, its sovereignty, as well as the state institutions.”

Kallas also said the fall of the government shows that Assad’s backers in Russia and Iran “are weakened, distracted and overstretched in other theaters in the broader Middle East, but also in Ukraine.”

Turkey’s intelligence agency, MIT, has attacked a convoy of trucks that was allegedly carrying missiles, heavy weapons and ammunition that were abandoned by the Syrian government and reportedly seized by Syrian Kurdish militias, Turkish security officials said Tuesday.

The officials said 12 trucks, two tanks and two ammunition depots were “destroyed” in aerial strikes in the city of Qamishli, near the border with Turkey in northeast Syria. The officials provided the information on condition of anonymity in line with Turkish regulations. They did not say when the attack occurred.

The officials said the intelligence agency detected that weapons left by the Syrian government forces were being moved to warehouses belonging to the Syrian Kurdish People’s Defense Units, or YPG. Turkey views the group as a terrorist organization because of its links to the banned Kurdish militants that have led a decades long insurgency in Turkey.

The group was allegedly planning to use the equipment and supplies against Turkish security forces, according to the officials.

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The White House is signaling its approval of Israel’s strikes against Syrian military and alleged chemical weapons targets and seizure of a buffer zone in the Golan Heights after the fall of the Assad government.

“These are exigent operations to eliminate what they believe are imminent threats to their national security,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday. The U.S. leaves it up to the Israelis to discuss their operations, he added.

“They have as always the right to defend themselves,” Kirby said. He declined to detail U.S. intelligence cooperation with the Israelis that went into the strikes.

Kirby said the White House was reasserting its support of the 1974 Golan Heights disengagement agreement, but didn’t criticize the Israeli seizure of the demilitarized zone.

The Biden administration says it will recognize and support a new Syrian government that renounces terrorism, destroys chemical weapons stocks and protects the rights of minorities and women.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Tuesday that the U.S. would work with groups in Syria and regional partners to ensure that the transition from President Bashar Assad’s deposed government runs smoothly. He was not specific about which groups the U.S. would work with.

Blinken says Syrians should decide their future and that other countries should “support an inclusive and transparent process” and not interfere.“

“The United States will recognize and fully support a future Syria government that results from this process,” he said. “We stand prepared to lend all appropriate support to all of Syria’s diverse communities and constituencies.”

Jihad Mustafa Shibani was taking his new motorcycle and a friend for a spin around the house of the deposed president in western Damascus on Tuesday.

Shibani was released from prison a week before the fall of Damascus, after serving two years on charges of buying his motorcycle using foreign currency. He was tortured for 15 days and and given a quick trial where he was sentenced for two years, he said.

He was released the day Aleppo fell to the insurgents.

“Everything was banned in Syria,” he said, adding that only Assad, his family and supporters were permitted to this neighborhood. “For fifty years, my family’s house is near here, and we don’t know anything about it...The Syrian people had been oppressed, you can’t imagine.”

Shibani said he has no fear of the new comers. “We are not afraid. There can be no one more unjust than Bashar. Impossible.”

Lebanon’s caretaker prime minister is following up on reports that senior members of Bashar Assad’s authority have fled to Lebanon.

Nijab Mikati’s office said that Lebanon abides by international laws regarding people who cross its borders.

Rami Abdurrahman of the Britain-based opposition war monitor Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that several top security officials have entered Lebanon over the past two days.

Syria’s former intelligence chief Ali Mamlouk, who is wanted in Lebanon over two bombings that killed dozens in Tripoli in 2012 was brought by the Hezbollah group to their stronghold south of Beirut.

Lebanon’s caretaker Interior Minister Bassam Mawlawi, whose ministry is in charge of border crossings, told reporters Tuesday that no person who is wanted in Lebanon entered the country through legal border crossings.

There are dozens of illegal border crossings between Lebanon and Syria from where people are usually smuggled.

Even before the latest escalation, which led President Bashar Assad to flee the country, nearly 17 million people in Syria needed humanitarian assistance. More than 1 million have been displaced across Idlib, Aleppo, Hama and Homs since the escalation.

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The United Nations says humanitarian operations in two major areas in northwestern Syria have resumed, deploying food, medical supplies, fuel and other needed services and supplies.

Spokesman Jens Laerke of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported that some health facilities were “overwhelmed” — in part due to staff shortages — and many border crossings have been closed, disrupting supply chains.

OCHA said humanitarian operations in some parts of northwestern Syria were put on hold in the early days of the recent escalation and resumed on Monday.

“As of yesterday, all humanitarian organizations in Idlib and northern Aleppo have resumed operations,” Laerke told reporters at a U.N. briefing in Geneva.

He said the three border crossings from Turkey used by the U.N. to deliver assistance into Syria remain open and “we are providing assistance in the northwest, including to those who have been newly displaced.”

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz added that he had instructed the army to establish a “defense zone free of weapons and terrorist threats in southern Syria, without a permanent Israeli presence, to prevent terrorism in Syria from taking root and organizing.” It was unclear if the demilitarized zone would reach beyond the buffer zone that Israel has taken over in the border area.

Israel has a long history of seizing territory during wars with its neighbors and occupying it indefinitely, citing security concerns. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it in a move not recognized internationally, except by the United States.

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Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said Tuesday that Israel’s military destroyed Syria’s fleet overnight and intends to establish a demilitarized zone “in southern Syria” to prevent attacks on Israel.

He also issued a warning to Syria’s rebels, saying that “whoever follows Assad’s path will end up like Assad — we will not allow an extremist Islamic terrorist entity to act against Israel across its border while putting its citizens at risk.”

Speaking at a naval base in Haifa, Katz said the Israeli navy “operated last night to destroy the Syrian fleet and with great success.”

Video showing the smoking wreckage of what appeared to be small Syrian naval ships in the port at Latakia was broadcast by Saudi-owned television station Al-Hadath on Tuesday.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has closely tracked the conflict since the civil war erupted in 2011, said Israel targeted Syrian warships, military warehouses and an air-defense facility on the coast.

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Israel carried out a wave of heavy airstrikes across Syria as its troops advanced deeper into the country, a Syrian opposition war monitor said Tuesday. Israel denied its forces were advancing toward Damascus after they pushed into a buffer zone inside Syria following the overthrow of President Bashar Assad.

Associated Press reporters in the capital heard heavy airstrikes overnight and into Tuesday on the city and its suburbs. Photographs circulating online showed destroyed missile launchers, helicopters and warplanes.

There was no immediate comment from the insurgent groups — led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS – that have taken control of much of the country. Their lightning advance brought an end to the Assad family’s half-century rule after nearly 14 years of civil war. There are concerns over what comes next.

▶ Read more about the situation in Syria.

Members of the Syrian government under ousted President Bashar Assad will gradually transfer power to a new transitional cabinet headed by Mohammed al-Bashir.

The outgoing government met with al-Bashir for the first time since Assad fled Damascus over the weekend.

Al-Bashir told reporters after the meeting that the ministers discussed transferring the portfolios to the interim government during the transitional period until the beginning of March.

He said that in the coming days the new government will decide on each ministry.

Banks and shops are reopening in Damascus after the chaos and confusion of the first two days following the ouster of President Bashar Assad.

Sadi Ahmad, manager of Syria Gulf Bank, said life is returning to normal. A customer who came to withdraw money from an ATM was surprised to see it functioning.

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At the historic Hamadiyeh market, fighters who seized power were still standing guard but shops had reopened — even an ice cream stand.

Resident Maysoun Al-Qurabi said she was initially “against what happened,” referring to the insurgency, but changed her mind after seeing footage of rebels releasing inmates from the notorious Saydnaya prison.

“People are at ease and secure now,” she said. “Before, people were hungry and scared.”

Minority Christians in Syria have been living in a state of uneasy anticipation since insurgents headed by the Islamic militant group Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham took control after ousting President Bashar Assad.

Mazen Kalash, a resident of Bab Touma, a Christian neighborhood in Damascus, said he wants to know the plans of the new government that will be formed by the rebels.

“The important thing is to feel safe, bring order, law and respect to the citizens,” he said. “We need to be able to work whatever we want and do whatever we want without any interference from anyone.”

The insurgents have so far attempted to reassure minorities that they will be protected.

Large numbers of Syrian Christians, who made up 10% of the population, fled after the civil war erupted in 2011. Many of those who stayed supported Assad out of fear they might be targeted by Islamist insurgents.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lashed out at media during testimony at his corruption trial, which involves media moguls.

“There has never been such a biased media in any democracy … as there is in Israel,” Netanyahu told the court, describing his testy relationship with the press.

He is accused of exchanging regulatory favors with media bosses for more positive coverage of himself and his family. He has denied wrongdoing.

The U.N. envoy for Syria says armed groups that drove out President Bashar Assad have “been sending good messages” about national unity and inclusiveness but acknowledges that a Security Council resolution still counts the leading one as a terrorist group.

With Syria’s future and stability still very much in flux since Assad’s departure over the weekend, Geir Pedersen suggested that the international community needs to help the country get through this turbulent moment.

“We are still in what I would call a very fluid period. Things are not settled,” Pedersen told reporters at U.N. offices in Geneva on Tuesday. “There are there is a real opportunity for change, but this opportunity needs to be grasped by the Syrians themselves and supported by the U.N. and the international community.”

Referring to Israeli military strikes in Syria, Pedersen said it was “extremely important that we now don’t see any action from any international country that destroys the possibility for this transformation in Syria to take place.”

Turkey has “strongly” condemned Israel’s advance into Syrian territory, saying it was in violation of a 1974 agreement on a buffer zone inside Syria.

“We strongly condemn Israel’s violation of the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement, its entry into the separation zone between Israel and Syria, and its advance into Syrian territory,” Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The ministry accused Israel of “displaying a mentality of an occupier” at a time when the possibility of peace and stability had emerged in Syria. The statement also reiterated Turkey’s support to Syria’s “sovereignty, political unity, and territorial integrity.”

Israeli troops on Sunday entered the buffer zone that had been established after the 1973 Mideast war and the military said it would deploy in “several other places necessary for (Israel’s’) defense.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he works 17 to 18 hours a day and that he is engulfed in meetings, especially during the past year that Israel has been fighting wars.

Netanyahu was testifying in his long-running corruption trial. He has denied charges of fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in three separate cases.

“If only I could steal away five minutes to enjoy some time with my wife,” he told the court Tuesday.

An Israeli military spokesperson says reports circulating in the media about the alleged advancement of Israeli tanks toward Damascus are false.

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani said Israeli troops are stationed within a buffer zone on the border with Syria in order to protect Israel following the collapse of President Bashar Assad’s rule.

Israeli media meanwhile reported that the air force was methodically destroying Syria’s military assets to ensure whoever rules the country next would have to rebuild them.

The operations “have been systematically destroying all that remains of the escaped tyrant’s military,” wrote Yossi Yehoshua, the military correspondent for Israel’s largest daily, Yediot Ahronot.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin took the witness stand on Tuesday in his trial for alleged corruption.

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He is accused of promoting advantageous regulation for media moguls in exchange for favorable coverage of himself and his family. He is also accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of cigars and champagne from a billionaire Hollywood producer in exchange for assisting him with personal and business interests.

Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing, saying the charges are a witch hunt orchestrated by a hostile media and a biased legal system that is out to topple his lengthy rule.

Israel’s air force has carried out hundreds of airstrikes in different parts of Syria as its ground forces move north of the Golan Heights along the border with Lebanon, according to an opposition war monitor.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Tuesday that since the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government, Israel’s air force has carried out more than 300 airstrikes against research centers, arms depots and military infrastructure across Syria, as well as a naval base along the Mediterranean coast.

Associated Press journalists in Damascus witnessed intense airstrikes on the city and its suburbs overnight into Tuesday morning.

Photographs posted online by activists showed destroyed missile launchers, helicopters and warplanes.

An Israeli military official says troops plan to seize a buffer zone inside Syria as well as “a few more points that have strategic meaning.”

The official spoke Tuesday on condition of anonymity in line with regulations. The official dismissed reports of a larger Israeli invasion as “rumors.”

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Following the overthrow of President Bashar Assad, Israel sent troops into a buffer zone in Syria established after the 1973 Mideast war. It said the move was temporary and was aimed at preventing attacks. It said the 1974 agreement establishing the zone had collapsed and that Syrian troops had withdrawn from their positions.

Israel has also carried out airstrikes across Syria in recent days targeting what it says are suspected chemical weapons and long-range rockets.

Saudi Arabia has condemned Israel’s incursion into a buffer zone in Syria and a wave of Israeli airstrikes launched after the overthrow of President Bashar Assad.

The Saudi Foreign Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that “the assaults carried out by the Israeli occupation government, including the seizure of the buffer zone in the Golan Heights, and the targeting of Syrian territory confirm Israel’s continued violation of the principles of international law and its determination to sabotage Syria’s chances of restoring its security, stability and territorial integrity.”

Israel sent troops into a buffer zone inside Syria that had been established after the 1973 Mideast war. It said the move was temporary and was taken to prevent any cross-border attacks after Syrian troops withdrew.