Israel defends strikes on Syrian weapons bases and sinking navy. Video Icon. VIDEO. Binyamin Netanyahu faces backlash but says the attacks were vital for his country’s security and rules out a march on Damascus. Tuesday December 10 2024, 11.20pm, The Times. A Syrian naval ship lies destroyed in an overnight Israeli attack on the port city of LatakiaAAREF WATAD/GETTY IMAGES. Israel launched lightning raids on Syria by land, air and sea on Tuesday, bombing hundreds of weapons silos and other former regime sites, and sinking its navy.. The Israeli leadership insisted it had no intention of marching on Damascus after the Syrian capital was seized by the former jihadist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, at the weekend.. But as the world nervously addressed the question of how it could help a proscribed terrorist group establish a safe, inclusive, representative and prosperous government in place of the Assad dynasty, Israel’s leaders made clear they were not waiting to find out.. Israel hits Syrian military targets. “Within the last 48 hours, the Israel Defence Forces struck most of the strategic weapons stockpiles in Syria, preventing them from falling into the hands of terrorist elements,” a statement said, adding that 480 targets had been hit including warplanes, ships and tanks.. A spokesman accepted that troops had moved beyond the United Nations buffer zone on the Syrian side of the border with the occupied Golan Heights, the Syrian territory Israel seized in the Six-Day War and later annexed. However, the defence minister, Israel Katz, denied it was approaching the outskirts of Damascus.. Advertisement. Meanwhile, the Israeli navy also sank a good part of the Syrian navy in the Mediterranean.. “We have no intention of interfering in Syria’s internal affairs, but we clearly intend to do what is necessary to ensure our security,” Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, said.. Netanyahu insisted the attacks were necessary. MAYA ALLERUZZO/AFP/GETTY IMAGES. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are among those condemning Israel’s actions, however, as a breach of international law.. • Dispatch: Life after Assad: Syria rises from ashes as world nervously watches. “Any attack on the freedom of the Syrian people, the stability of the new administration, and the integrity of its lands will find us standing against it,” Turkey’s President Erdogan said.. Advertisement. Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) owes its existence to its differences with Islamic State. HTS’s leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, a Syrian-born jihadist fighter in Iraq, was sent by the Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to assist — some would say hijack — the uprising against President Assad late in 2011. But the two men argued and split 18 months later, in part because Jolani opposed Isis’s extreme methods. Jolani also later split with al-Qaeda and declared HTS to be a more moderate, nationally-focused Islamist group.. A boy walks past destroyed military vehicles in Qamishli, in mainly Kurdish northeastern Syria. DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. Israeli soldiers return from the buffer zone, near the Druze village of Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights. JALAA MAREY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES. Netanhayu, however, is keenly aware like western counterparts of the damage Isis was able to inflict using the weapons it captured as the Iraqi army fled Mosul and other Iraqi cities in 2014.. HTS captured the eastern city of Deir Ezzor from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) on Tuesday night.. “Our forces have seized the entire city of Deir Ezzor,” the rebels said, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said that Kurdish forces had withdrawn to other localities.. The SDF has also been fighting Turkish-backed rebels in north of the country but reached a ceasefire agreement in Manbij after mediation from the US.. Advertisement. • Analysis: Why is Israel striking Syria?. Jolani made a key step to regularise his new authority on Tuesday: he formally abandoned his nom de guerre, and began issuing statements in his real name, Ahmed al-Sharaa. He also met the regime prime minister, Mohammed al-Jalali, who had promised to stay to ensure a smooth handover.. Jalali was replaced by Mohammed al-Bashir, the head of the Salvation Government, who will be interim prime minister until March.. Abu Mohammed al-Jolani meets former prime minister Mohammed Ghazi al-Jalali. Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, said it was important to preserve a unitary Syrian state and not to allow Isis to re-form. “We have a clear interest in doing what we can to avoid the fragmentation of Syria, mass migrations from Syria and, of course, the export of terrorism and extremism,” he said.. The British government said that despite its ambiguous status talks with HTS were possible.. Advertisement. The prime minister’s official spokesman said: “The fact that HTS is a proscribed terrorist group does not prevent the Government from engaging with HTS in the future.. “There’s no absolute offence of meeting a proscribed organisation.”. He said that engagement with such organisations “could for example include meetings designed to encourage a designated group to engage in a peace process or facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid”.. Pat McFadden, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, said that any decision on whether to lift the group’s proscription needed to be taken quickly. He told BBC Radio 4’s Today : “We don’t know what will happen in Syria right now, whether it’s going to be a better future for the country, or whether it’s going to be more chaos, no one can be certain about that right now.. “But obviously, if the situation stabilises, there’ll be a decision to make about how to deal with whatever new regime is in place there.”. Advertisement. Ministers and their western counterparts know all too well that the Assad regime’s isolation under the weight of sanctions and its own various terrorist designations was partly responsible for its final collapse.. The IDF hit the Mezzeh air base near Damascus on Sunday as Assad fled the country. ALI HAJ SULEIMAN/GETTY IMAGES. The last traces of its moral decay were meanwhile being cleaned away.. Damascus Hospital said it had so far received 35 bodies discovered as prison and torture room doors were unlocked by the rebels. They appeared to have been killed in the regime’s last throes.. On steel pulleys and on the floor lay body bags of men, their faces twisted and limbs contorted.. Doctors said that they could not tell if the torture they had clearly suffered, which included beatings, burnings, and broken bones, was the cause of death.. Hundreds of people crowded the hospital, seeking information about their lost loved ones, thousands of whom remain unaccounted for.. The first body to be picked up, by a cousin, was that of Mujanad Walid Adib Ali, a former Free Syrian Army fighter in his early 30s. Records showed that despite accepting an amnesty in 2018 for fighting alongside the opposition, he was rearrested earlier this year.. • ‘I saw my Sednaya prison cell on TV — no one should ever experience that’. The hospital’s pathologists say he was killed just two weeks ago, mere days before the government fell.. Hundreds of relatives lined the hospital corridors, shouting out names and holding up photographs.. “I lost two children!” said Lina Asmar. They were 13 and 14 when picked by Assad’s men, she said.. “Let the world see what they did to us.” she said. “Let the world hear my name! I am not afraid. When they took my children, they took my life.”. The British jihadists who could be freed from Syrian camps. December 10 2024, 7.50pm. Shayma Bakht. , News Reporter |. Larisa Brown. , Defence Editor |. Tom Witherow. , General News Reporter. Video Icon. VIDEO. Netanyahu issues warning to new rulers of Syria. December 10 2024, 9.40pm. Edmund Bower, Damascus |. David Harding. |. Joshua Thurston. |. Gabrielle Weiniger. , Israel Correspondent |. Fintan Hogan. | Keeva Cussen. LEADING ARTICLE. Russia’s Rebuff. December 10 2024, 10.00pm. The Times Leading Articles. PROMOTED CONTENT. Previous article. Animal antics: the winners of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards. Previous article. Next article. ‘I saw my Sednaya prison cell on TV — no one should ever experience that’. Next article
