BEIRUT: A Syria war monitor has said Israel launched strikes early Saturday targeting military sites in Damascus and its countryside, in the latest such raids since rebels brought down Bashar al-Assad almost a week ago.
“Israeli strikes destroyed a scientific institute” and other related military facilities in Barzeh, in northern Damascus, and targeted a “military airport” in the capital’s countryside, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Strikes also targeted “Scud ballistic missile warehouses” and launchers in the Qalamun area, as well as “rockets, depots and tunnels under the mountain”, according to the Britain-based Observatory, which has a network of sources inside Syria.
AFP cited the Observatory as saying that several rounds of bombardment targeted “military sites of the former regime forces, as part of destroying what is left of the future Syrian army’s capabilities”.
Israel air strikes on Friday targeted “a missile base at the top of Damascus’s Mount Qasyun”, the group said, as well as an airport in southern Sweida province and “defence and research labs in Masyaf”, in Hama province.
Since Assad’s fall, Israel has launched hundreds of strikes against Syrian military sites, targeting everything from chemical weapons stores to air defences.
In a move that has drawn international condemnation, Israel also seized a United Nations-patrolled buffer zone on the Syrian Golan Heights just hours after the rebels, led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, took Damascus.
UN Chief Expresses Concern over “extensive violations” of Syrian Sovereignty
On Thursday, UN chief Antonio Guterres expressed concern over “extensive violations” of Syrian sovereignty and the Israeli strikes in the country, his spokesman said.
The development took place as Syrians celebrated the day they called the “Friday of victory” with fireworks heralding the fall of the Assad dynasty.
More than half a century of rule by his clan came to a sudden end on Sunday, after a lightning rebel offensive swept across the country and took the capital.
Assad’s fall has also led to fast-moving diplomatic developments, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken among envoys set to discuss Syria on Saturday in the Jordanian city of Aqaba.
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Turkey, meanwhile, will reopen its embassy in Damascus, closed since 2012 amid calls by Ankara for Assad to step down.
A Qatari diplomat said a delegation from the Gulf emirate would visit Syria on Sunday to meet transitional government officials and discuss aid and the reopening of their embassy.
Unlike other regional countries, Qatar never restored diplomatic ties with Assad after a rupture in 2011.
Assad has fled Syria, closing an era while civil war in Syria killed more than 500,000 people and displaced millions. — with input from AFP
