And “Warning” for the future. Israel will not allow the presence on the borders with the Syria of “hostile forces” capable of threatening its safety. The Israeli Defense Minister, Israel Katz, was rather explicit in his message to the Syrian president at Interim, Ahmed al-Sharaa, after the outlets and raids of the past few hours who scored a new escalation in the relationship between Damascus and Tel Aviv, leaving at least 13 deaths on the ground.
Israeli attacks have affected several areas of the Arab country. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in the United Kingdom and sources in the Arabic country, four people were killed in a raid – confirmed by Tsahal – who targeted a military airport in the Syrian central province of Hama. The attack, which also caused wounded “among the staff of the Ministry of Defense”, “completely put out” the structure.
The Sana Syrian state agency then reported that “an Israeli employment plane hit near a scientific research building” in the Barzeh district of Damascus, already targeted in the past. The Sham broadcaster added that a raid was also conducted against an aerial base near Palmira.
Finally, the authorities of the Province of Daraa denounced that nine civilians were killed and several injured in an Israeli operation near the city of Nawa, in what they supported being the deepest incursion by land of Israel in southern Syria so far.
According to the Observatory, the victims were local armed men who were killed “while attempting to face Israeli forces, following the requests of Jihad against the Israeli foray from the mosques in the area”. The version of a spokesman for the IDF is that the military were conducting an operation in the Tasil area, near Nawa, “kidnapping weapons and destroying terrorist infrastructures” when “several armed men shot against our strength”, which “responded by shooting against them and eliminating several terrorists armed from the ground and from the sky”. There have been no Israeli victims.
The accusations of Damascus in Tel Aviv
The new government of Damascus, who seeks international legitimacy, has accused Tel Aviv of having unleashed a military campaign to destabilize Syria. “This unjustified escalation is a deliberated attempt to destabilize Syria and aggravate the sufferings of its people,” said the Foreign Ministry in a declaration on Telegram. Katz, for his part, defined the air attacks a warning and launched a warning to Al-Sharaa.
“I warn the Syrian leader Al-Jolani: if you allow hostile forces to enter Syria and threaten the Israeli security interests, you will pay a high price,” Katz said by contacting the interim president with the battle name he used when he was in command of the Islamist faction Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham, who had a key role in the fall of the Bashar Al-Assad regime last November.
“The activity of the Air Force of yesterday against the T4 airports (the Tiyas aerial base in the Governorate of Homs, editor’s note), Hama and the Damascus area sends a clear message and is a warning for the future”, clarified the minister.
Israel wants to prevent sophisticated weapons from falling into the hands of the new authorities, which he considers Jihadist. In February, the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, hoped that southern Syria will be completely smilitized, underlining that Tel Aviv will not accept the presence of the forces of the new government of Damascus, led by the Islamists, near the Israeli territory. In December, with the Arabic country in the chaos, Netanyahu had ordered the army to enter the bearing area patrolled by the United Nations on the heights of the Golan, which separated the Israeli and Syrian forces along the 1974 armistice line.