DAMASCUS, Syria (AFP) — Israel had “destroyed the most important military sites in Syria” with a flurry of air strikes since the fall of president Bashar al-Assad’s government to incapacitate the former regime’s armed forces, a war monitor said Tuesday.
Israel, which borders Syria, sent troops into a buffer zone on the east of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights after Assad’s fall, in what Foreign Minister Gideon Saar described as a “limited and temporary step” for “security reasons.”
It has also carried out “about 300 air strikes on Syrian territory” over the last 48 hours, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“Israel destroyed the most important military sites in Syria, including Syrian airports and their warehouses, aircraft squadrons, radars, military signal stations, and many weapons and ammunition depots in various locations in most Syrian governorates,” the Britain-based Observatory said in a statement Tuesday.
Near the port city of Latakia, Israel targeted an air defense facility and damaged Syrian naval ships as well as military warehouses.
In and around the capital Damascus, strikes targeted military installations, research centers and the electronic warfare administration.
Early Tuesday, Agence France-Presse journalists heard loud explosions in Damascus, hours after the strikes reported by the Observatory.
IS lurks
Meanwhile, what remains of the Islamic State (IS) group in Syria could gain new life after Assad’s fall, potentially claiming territory and freeing its fighters in the Kurdish-controlled northeast.
IS has long flourished in conditions of war or uncertainty, often on the territory of failing states.
Its fighters are for now holed up in small cells spread across the eastern Syrian desert — with their survival already marking a win in the face of the defunct Assad leadership’s weak grip on the region.
A chaotic political transition following the bloody half-century of the dynasty’s rule and 13 years of civil war could offer the scattered jihadists benefits.
“Chaos and anarchy will inevitably be a boon to the Islamic State, which has been biding its time, slowly and steadily rebuilding its networks throughout the country,” said Colin Clark, research director at the New York-based Soufan Center.
Apparently scenting danger in the light of Assad’s ouster at the weekend, US Central Command — responsible for operations in the Middle East — said Sunday it had launched air strikes against more than 75 IS targets.
IS’ own official weekly Al-Naba wrote in its latest edition that it would accept no new government in Damascus unless the group itself was in charge.