Two Days of Strikes, More than 250 Targets
The Air Force launched a large-scale wave of strikes throughout Syria, against targets and equipment that have so far been used by Assad’s army, in order that they do not fall into the hands of the rebels and can no longer pose a threat to Israel. The strikes continued throughout the last two days. ‘This is one of the largest strike operations in the history of the Air Force,’ described a senior IDF official according to reports from Galatz; ‘Elimination Sale,’ other security sources referred to it, stating that the goal of the strikes is to ensure the weakening of power entities in Syria, and those who will finally take the reins of power, for a long term.
Among the targets struck by the Air Force, one can count the Syrian Air Force, which lost dozens of planes; the Syrian air defense system, one of the largest and most developed in the world, which was almost entirely rendered inoperable by the IDF; APCs, tanks, and land army sites, including key bases; production sites and arms warehouses, advanced surface-to-surface missile storage sites that have posed a threat to Israel for decades; and according to some reports, also sites with unconventional weapons, foremost among them the chemical weapons that Assad has accumulated over the years and even used on various occasions against his domestic enemies.
IDF in the Buffer Zone
In parallel to the air activities taking place over the skies of all of Syria, IDF ground forces are operating in the joint border area between the countries. In the last two days, the IDF has taken control of the “buffer zone” established between Israel and Syria in the force separation agreements in 1974, after the Yom Kippur War, an agreement now considered by Israel to be void, in light of the fall of the regime that signed it. Among other things, Israeli forces captured the peak of the Hermon, about 10 km from the Israeli Hermon, and at an altitude of 2.8 km above sea level.
Gideon Sa’ar: “The Iranian Occupation in Syria is Over”
According to reports in Lebanese media last night, IDF armored forces continued their advance beyond the buffer zone into the Syrian Golan Heights and are now only 20 km from Damascus, the capital city. These reports have been denied so far by security officials and commentators, who claim that the IDF has not left the buffer zone, a distance of 30 km from Damascus.
