AQRABA, Syria — Standing some 40 ft from the charred stays of the Syrian air pressure helicopter, Ahmad Abu Leyl, a younger insurgent fighter, cocked his ear, listening for the attribute buzzing of an Israeli drone overhead.
“I don’t wish to get nearer,” he stated. “They would possibly hit this place once more in the event that they see we’re close to.”
Then he climbed on his motorbike, gunned the engine and sped away.
It had been a tough night time for Abu Leyl and the small detachment of insurgent fighters tasked with defending the Aqraba navy air base simply three miles southeast of the sting of the capital, Damascus. They had arrived right here early Monday, a day after the Syrian military crumbled — together with the brutally repressive authorities of Bashar Assad — and the rebels swept into energy.
Israel assaults Syrian navy arsenals at Aqrabah navy airbase
All was calm at first, with Abu Leyl and his fellow rebels doing little greater than stopping the occasional trespasser from looting the deserted barracks and officer’s quarters. Then early Tuesday morning, a sequence of explosions turned the bottom’s final purposeful helicopters — a pair of Soviet-era Mi-8s — into blazing husks.
It was a part of a large, multiday airstrike marketing campaign by Israel that noticed its air pressure and navy hit greater than 350 targets throughout the nation since Saturday, destroying an estimated 70% of Syria’s strategic navy capabilities, based on the Israeli navy.
“There had been so many blasts we didn’t sleep,” stated Abu Leyl, who gave a nom de guerre as a result of he was not approved to talk to the media. Only one forlorn-looking Mi-8 remained on the tarmac, however Abu Leyl dismissed it.
“It doesn’t even work,” he stated. “I assume that’s why they didn’t trouble bombing it.”
Israel is doing every little thing it might probably to forestall Syria’s new leaders — Islamists who hint their roots to Al Qaeda however say they’ve moderated their views — from inheriting the previous authorities’s appreciable arsenal. The Israeli navy stated it focused Syrian antiaircraft batteries, missile depots, manufacturing services, drones, helicopters, fighter jets, tanks, hangars, radars and 15 naval vessels.
Rebel forces seized Mengh airbase and town of Tel Rifaat within the Aleppo countryside on Dec. 1, 2024, following clashes with the Syrian Democratic Forces and Syrian authorities forces.
(Rami Alsayed / Getty Images)
The assaults come as Israeli floor forces pushed into the buffer zone separating the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria.
The troops now occupy the Syrian aspect of Mt. Hermon, a strategic web site that affords whoever holds it a view of Damascus. Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz stated the navy was creating “a defensive sterile zone” however didn’t elaborate on what that meant.
“From right here, I warn the insurgent leaders in Syria: Those who observe Assad’s path will finish like Assad,” he stated.
The strikes sparked a wave of opprobrium from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which accused Israel of attacking Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Geir Pedersen, the United Nations particular envoy to Syria, additionally decried Israel’s actions, saying they wanted to cease.
The Biden administration, which has performed little over the past 12 months to constrain Israel’s navy actions within the area, stated it hoped the incursions into the Golan Heights had been non permanent.
“Israel has stated that these actions are non permanent to defend its borders — these should not everlasting actions,” stated State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, pointing to the abandonment of border positions by the Syrian military that has left a vacuum.
“And so finally, what we wish to see is lasting stability between … Israel and Syria,” he stated.
A Syrian opposition fighter tears a portray depicting Syria’s overthrown President Bashar Assad and his late father, Hafez Assad, at Aleppo International Airport on Dec. 2, 2024.
(Ghaith Alsayed / Associated Press)
He known as on “all sides” to uphold a disengagement settlement between Israel and Syria that adopted the 1973 Yom Kippur War and that the U.N. says Israel is now violating.
Israel’s assaults are additionally geared toward stopping Iran from preserving a foothold in Syria.
Under Assad, Syria was a part of Iran’s “axis of resistance,” a community of regional governments and paramilitary factions Tehran wielded towards the U.S. and Israel. Syria’s territory was used as a logistical passageway for the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which has been at struggle with Israel since October 2023.
The relationship went each methods, with Hezbollah fighters serving as shock troops that bolstered Assad’s flagging military — an intervention the group justified as defending Shiite minorities and shrines in Syria from Islamist and jihadi factions within the opposition.
In the previous few weeks, Israel has repeatedly hit border crossings between Syria and Lebanon that it stated had been getting used to smuggle weapons for Hezbollah’s arsenal.
Israel’s current airstrikes have additionally had an impact on the group’s presence in Syria, pushing a lot of its leaders and cadres to flee again to Lebanon.
Israeli troopers stand subsequent to a automobile close to the so-called Alpha Line that separates the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights from Syria, on Dec. 10, 2024.
(Matias Delacroix / Associated Press)
“Hezbollah? They all went house,” stated Rabie, a 39-year-old resident close to Sayeda Zainab, a Shiite shrine south of Damascus, who gave solely his first identify. “We awoke this morning and none of them are round.”
In an announcement Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated Israel needed to have “relations” with Syria’s new authorities.
“But if this regime permits Iran to reestablish itself in Syria, or permits the switch of Iranian weapons, or weapons of any sort, to Hezbollah, or assaults us — we are going to reply forcefully and we are going to precise a heavy value,” he stated.
Times employees author Tracy Wilkinson in Washington contributed to this report.
