Israeli jets conducted several strikes on former Syrian army barracks and outposts in the southern Daraa province Monday, in the latest string of strikes targeting the country’s military infrastructure following the collapse of the Assad regime, according to two Syrian security sources.
The sources told Reuters that at least six strikes hit a base in the town of Jbab, while at least another eight hit a former army base in the city of Izraa. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
The strikes were reported at military sites belonging to the former Syrian regime.
“The Israeli occupation aircraft carried out several strikes on the surroundings of the towns of Jbab and Izraa in the north of Daraa,” the state news agency SANA said.
Israeli officials have vowed to demilitarize the southern Syria area close to Israel’s border following the fall of Bashar al-Assad.
Syrian government control is weak in the region, and Israel has threatened to target interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s forces if they deploy there.
Upon the Assad regime’s collapse, Israel sent troops into a UN-patrolled buffer zone separating Israeli and Syrian forces on the strategic Golan Heights, where it maintains a military presence.
Last week Defense Minister Israel Katz called Sharaa “a jihadist terrorist of the al-Qaeda school who is committing horrifying acts against a civilian population.”
Earlier Monday, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar called the transitional regime “pure evil,”
Syria’s Islamist-led government on Monday said it had completed a military operation against a nascent insurgency. The violence had been centred around coastal provinces where most of Syria’s Alawite minority live.
Assad is an Alawite, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, whose family for decades ruled over the Sunni Muslim majority.
British-based war monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights has said that 973 civilians were killed by government forces and allied fighters in reprisal killings. More than 250 Alawite fighters were killed and more than 230 members of government security forces were also killed, the group said.
Sharaa dismissed the Israeli comments as “nonsense.”
“They are the last ones who can talk,” he said, noting the high death toll in Israel’s 17 months of war against Hamas in Gaza.