Benjamin Netanyahu pledges he does not want war with Syria – whilst launching the biggest attacks the country had suffered in more than a decade, according to UK-based war monitor
Israel has overnight smashed crisis-hit Syrian targets with the “most violent strikes since 2012,” according to UK-based war monitors – even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tells US President-elect Donald Trump he does not want war with his neighbour.
It happened amid fears Syria could descend further into violent civil war from Islamic State and other groups and Israel tries to destroy toppled despot Bashar al-Assad’s military so jihadists cannot use them against it. Strikes obliterated missile warehouses in Syria, triggering secondary blasts and more military targets along the country’s coast.
Enormous explosions hit the coastal city of Tartous “as a result of successive strikes and ground to ground missiles from the warehouses”. Tartous was a centre for Russia’s military – giving Putin access to the Mediterranean, Europe and north Africa.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported the violence overnight was the worst in over a decade – and happened just hours after PM Netanyahu spoke to President-elect Trump on Sunday. Shortly after that conversation he issued a staggering claim in which he said: “We have no interest in a conflict with Syria. We will determine Israeli policy regarding Syria according to the reality on the ground.”
Israel has destroyed 80% of Syria’s military in a bid to stop weapons getting into the hands of jihadists. The US embassy in Damascus advised Americans to leave Syria, saying the security situation there continues to be volatile and unpredictable with armed conflict and “terrorism throughout the country.”
The new Syrian administration, led by the Harat Tahrir al-Sham, the former insurgents who toppled Assad, complained to the UN Security Council about the Israeli bombardment and incursions into Syrian territory in the Golan Heights. However, it also said it does not want a military confrontation with Israel.
War is still raging in Gaza with Palestinian medics on Monday saying an Israeli strike killed at least 10 people, including a family of four in the Strip overnight. This comes as mourners gathered for the funeral of a Palestinian journalist working for Al Jazeera TV who was killed in a strike on a point for Gaza’s civil defense agency Sunday.
Palestinian journalist Ahmed al-Louh and five Palestinian Civil Defence workers in central Gaza’s Nuseirat camp. Four others were also killed. Al-Louh, who worked as a cameraman for Al Jazeera alongside other media outlets, was killed on Sunday in the strike on the Civil Defence post in the central Gaza camp, according to media sources.
The Israel-Hamas war erupted on Oct. 7 last year when Hamas militants stormed southern Israel, killing some 1, 200 people and taking another 250 hostage. Israel responded with heavy bombardment and a ground incursion into the Gaza Strip, leaving nearly 45,000 Palestinians dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.