State media reports one person killed outside Damascus as Israel said making a list of Syrian government targets to potentially attack over targeting of minority
The Israel Defense Forces said its fighter jets had carried out a wave of airstrikes in Syria late Friday, less than a day after Israel attacked near the presidential palace in Damascus, amid Israeli warnings to Syria’s new Islamist rulers not to harm their country’s Druze minority following deadly sectarian clashes.
The strikes late Friday targeted “a military site, anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-air missile infrastructure,” the IDF said in a statement, as the Kan public broadcaster reported that Israel was readying a list of military and government targets to potentially attack in Syria.
The military’s statement came some two hours after Syria’s state news agency SANA reported Israeli airstrikes near Damascus and in the west, at Latakia and Hama, as well as in Daraa in the south. SANA said one civilian was killed at Harasta near Damascus, and four people were wounded near Hama.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, a watchdog of unclear funding, said Israel had carried out more than 20 strikes on military targets across Syria in the “heaviest” assault by Israel on its northeastern neighbor this year.
The Israeli strikes came after Druze clerics and armed factions reaffirmed their loyalty to Damascus, following clashes between Druze fighters and Syrian forces, including government-affiliated groups, in the Damascus suburbs of Jaramana and in Sweida province in southern Syria.
Israel, home to some 150,000 Druze, has in recent days taken in ten Syrian Druze who were apparently wounded in the sectarian clashes there, including five on Friday afternoon. They were all being treated at the Ziv Medical Center in Safed.
Israel’s Druze took to the streets late Thursday and early Friday to demand that Jerusalem take action to support their brethren in Syria.
The demonstrations subsided after Israeli Druze leader Sheikh Muafak Tarif and Druze lawmaker Hamed Amar called on the protesters to stand down.
On Friday, Tarif spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and thanked him for his orders for the Druze in Syria to be protected, including the attack on the presidential palace complex in Damascus, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.
Netanyahu had called that attack a “message to the Syrian regime” that Israel would not tolerate the presence of Syrian armed forces south of Damascus, “or any threat to the Druze community.”
Syrian Druze leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri had on Thursday urged international intervention to protect his people from the “genocidal campaign” that he blamed on Syria’s government. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also urged the international community to protect Syria’s Druze against “the regime and its terrorist gangs.”
Syria’s government has vowed to protect minorities and rejected calls for international intervention. On Friday, Syria’s de facto leader, Ahmed Al-Sharaa, met with Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, an ally of Iran’s Lebanese proxy Hezbollah who has urged his Syrian kinsfolk to reject “Israeli interference.”
Israel has attacked hundreds of military sites in Syria since forces led by Al-Sharaa deposed Syria’s longtime leader Bashar Al-Assad in December. Citing potential danger following the ouster, Israel sent troops into the Syrian side of the demilitarized zone that separates the two countries.
De-escalation deal in areas that saw sectarian violence
After this week’s clashes, a de-escalation deal was agreed between Druze representatives and Sharaa’s government, prompting troop deployments in Sahnaya and tighter security around Jaramana.
Syrian officials said the agreement also included the immediate surrender of heavy weapons.
An AFP photographer saw troops taking over checkpoints from Druze gunmen in Jaramana, although no handover of weapons was witnessed.
The sectarian violence this week was sparked by the circulation of an audio recording attributed to a Druze citizen and deemed blasphemous. AFP was unable to confirm its authenticity.
Syria’s government said “outlaw groups” were behind the violence, but SOHR and Druze residents said forces affiliated with the new authorities attacked Jaramana and Sahnaya and clashed with Druze gunmen.
In Sweida, religious authorities and military factions said after a meeting that they are “an inseparable part of the united Syrian homeland,” and rejected “division, separation or secession.” SANA said government security forces were being sent to Sweida to “maintain security.”
Syria’s new authorities have roots in the Al-Qaeda jihadist network. They have vowed inclusive rule in the multi-confessional, multi-ethnic country, but must also contend with internal pressures from radical Islamists.
The latest violence follows massacres of Alawites in March, when SOHR said the security forces and their allies killed more than 1,700 civilians.
That was the worst bloodshed since the overthrow of Assad, who is from that minority community. The government accused Assad loyalists of sparking the violence.
