At a distance of only 20 kilometers south of Damascus, since this morning, Israeli armored vehicles are located, while the advance of the Israeli ground forces in southern Syria is in full progress, fully controlling and without resistance dozens of Syrian villages and towns. This development follows Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz’s order yesterday to destroy all Syrian military infrastructure in the area beyond the Golan Heights dead zone and up to the Jabal Al-Druze region of southern Syria bordering Jordan and controlled by the Druze community.

The goal is the “demilitarized zone”

The goal of the Israeli advance is to create a demilitarized zone inside Syrian territory. Military officials tell Israeli media that the objective of the operations in Syria is to prevent the rebels from taking control of the Assad regime’s military infrastructure and arsenal, so that they do not turn against Israel in the future. With his statements yesterday, Foreign Minister Gidon Sa’ar clarified that the presence of the Israeli army in the region is “temporary, in order not to repeat a ‘new October 7’ in northern Israel”. However, the Saar clarifications did not convince the governments of Jordan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which in their official announcements condemned the Israeli advance in Syria, which they characterized as a flagrant violation of international law. On the other hand, Israeli government sources say that the United States has already been informed and has approved the advance.

All-night pounding on military targets

Arab news networks report that overnight, Israeli and US helicopters struck Syrian military targets in the Kalmon mountain range on the outskirts of Damascus. Throughout the night, Israeli warplanes pounded military airfields and weapons depots of the regular Syrian army in central and northern Syria. The targets include Al-Sueirat military airport on the outskirts of Homs, military bases in Raqqa and Hasqa provinces, Syrian military industry factory units on the outskirts of Aleppo and a chemical weapons factory in Damascus province. Also bombed was the military airport, located on the outskirts of the northeastern Syrian city of Qamishli, which is the administrative center of the de facto autonomous region of the Syrian Kurds, a few kilometers from the border with Turkey – the northernmost and closest Syrian to Turkey military target hit by the Israeli air force since the start of the Syrian civil war until today.

As the state Israeli radio broadcasts today, as a result of a coordinated operation by the Israeli navy and the air force, the forces of the Syrian navy were completely destroyed, after heavy bombardments that took place throughout the night on the naval bases located on the outskirts of the coastal cities of Mina Al-Baida and Latakia.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reports that within 48 hours of the fall of the Assad regime, Israel bombed at least 250 targets in Syria.