Israeli warplanes carried out a nighttime airstrike near Syria’s presidential palace in Damascus on Thursday night amid escalating sectarian violence against the country’s Druze community.
“In a clear message to the Syrian regime, Israel conducted a nighttime strike near the presidential palace in Damascus,” Netanyahu said in a joint statement with Defense Minister Israel Katz this morning. “We will not allow Syrian forces to expand south of the capital or threaten the Druze population.”
IDF officials confirmed the operation, stating fighter jets had hit “an area adjacent to the residence of Ahmad Hussein al-Sharaa” in central Damascus, without specifying an exact target. Syrian authorities have not issued an official response, though residents reported intense aerial activity and multiple explosions shaking parts of the capital.
The strike follows an earlier Israeli operation on Wednesday, when warplanes targeted what officials described as an “extremist cell” in Sahnaya, a town southwest of Damascus. Netanyahu and Katz called Wednesday’s operation a “warning action” against an unidentified armed group “preparing to continue attacking the Druze population.”
Throughout the week, Syria has experienced sectarian clashes that have left more than 100 people dead, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Syria’s state news agency SANA reports that HTS forces launched a wide-scale operation in Sahnaya to arrest “outlawed gangs” after an unidentified armed group attacked a Syrian government checkpoint late Tuesday.
Top Syrian Druze leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri has called for the “immediate intervention” of international peacekeeping forces “for the swift protection of an innocent, defenseless population.” He described the violence against his community as a “campaign of extermination” carried out by Syrian government “affiliated extremist gangs.”
Since December, Israel has carried out extensive airstrikes on military bases in Syria that belonged to the previous regime and moved forces into a UN-monitored demilitarized zone on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. The IDF describes its presence in southern Syria’s buffer zone as a temporary and defensive measure, though Katz said that troops will remain deployed in the area “indefinitely.”
Source link
