Israel strikes targets in southern Syria after demanding demilitarisation | Syria

Israeli warplanes have carried out several airstrikes on military targets outside Damascus and in southern Syria, as Israeli officials warned the country’s army not to move south of the capital city.

Israeli jets struck military sites late on Tuesday in the town of Kiswah, south of Damascus, as well as in the southern province of Deraa, local Syrian media reported.

The Israeli defence minister, Israel Katz, confirmed the strikes in southern Syria and warned that Israel “will not allow southern Syria to become southern Lebanon”.

Katz added that “any attempt by the Syrian regime forces and the country’s terrorist organisations to establish themselves in the security zone in southern Syria will be met with fire”.

On Sunday the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, demanded the complete demilitarisation of southern Syria.

Shortly after a Syrian rebel offensive led by Islamist opposition group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham toppled the Assad regime on 8 December, Israeli forces entered the UN buffer zone between Israel and Syria. Israeli forces have remained there ever since, despite protests by Syria’s new government and the UN, which monitors the demilitarised zone between the two countries.

Israel’s air force also carried out hundreds of airstrikes against weapons depots, naval bases and Syrian military infrastructure in the weeks after the fall of the Assad regime in an attempt to prevent the weaponry from falling into rebel hands. Israeli airstrikes in Syria had mostly stopped since the new year.

Hours before the Israeli bombings on Tuesday, Syria condemned Israel’s invasion of the buffer zone and called for it to withdraw its forces from Syrian territory. The statement was issued at the end of a national dialogue conference which gathered hundreds of Syrian activists and leaders to plan the country’s post-Assad political transition.

Besides verbal condemnations, the new Syrian government has not confronted Israeli forces in Syria. Battered by 14 years of civil war and still building the country’s new army, the Syrian military has little capacity for a fight with its heavily armed southern neighbour.

Though Syria officially dissolved all military factions on 29 January, the new government has not yet managed to form a national army. In practice, disparate militias are still not entirely under state control, with the defence ministry working out how to absorb tens of thousands of rebel fighters.

Prior to the fall of Assad, Israel bombed Syria periodically, though it usually did not publicly claim responsibility for the strikes. Most of Israel’s military activity in Syria was concentrated on Iranian forces and weapons transfers to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Hezbollah and Iranian-backed forces left Syria in the run-up to the fall of Assad. However, Israel also views Syria’s new rulers with suspicion, with Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, on Monday calling the new rulers of Syria a “jihadist, Islamist terror group”.