Syria’s new rulers have angrily denounced raids launched by Israel’s air force against unidentified targets near the presidential palace in Damascus, warning of a “dangerous escalation”.
Israeli officials said the attacks were intended to send a message to the Syrian government after days of bloody clashes near Damascus between pro-government militia forces and fighters from the Druze minority sect.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, and the defence minister, Israel Katz, said in a joint statement that the attack early on Friday, the second this week in Syria, was intended to deter the country’s new leadership from any hostile move against the Druze.
“This is a clear message to the Syrian regime. We will not allow the deployment of forces south of Damascus or any threat to the Druze community,” the statement said.
The Israeli army confirmed in a statement that fighter jets struck near to the area of the palace of the president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in Damascus but gave no further details.
On Friday, an Israeli fighter jet killed four civilians in another strike on Kanaker, a town south-west of the Druze-majority province Sweida. The strike came after repeated statements by a spokesperson for the Israeli military that it was deployed in southern Syria to prevent the entry of “enemy forces” into Druze villages.
Israel has said it will protect the Druze religious minority in Syria, a declaration that most Druze leaders have rebuffed.
The government in Damascus took power after ousting Bashar al-Assad in December last year and is dominated by the militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which has its roots in the al-Qaida jihadist network. Though Syria’s new rulers have promised inclusive rule in the multi-confessional, multi-ethnic country, they face pressures from extremists within their own ranks.
Syria’s presidency called the strike “a dangerous escalation against state institutions and its sovereignty” and accused Israel of destabilising the country.
The clashes broke out on Tuesday after an audio clip circulated on social media of a man making derogatory comments about the prophet Muhammad. The clip, which was attributed to a Druze cleric, angered many Sunni Muslims, but may have been fabricated.
On Thursday, one of the three Syrian Druze spiritual leaders, Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, accused Syria’s government, which is mostly made up of radical Islamist groups led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, of what he called an “unjustified genocidal attack” on the minority community.
Hijri released a statement calling for international protection for the Druze in southern Syria, asking international forces to “intervene immediately”. The two other Syrian Druze religious leaders chose to negotiate with Damascus directly and rejected calls for international intervention in Syria.
A UK-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said 56 people in Sahnaya and the Druze-majority Damascus suburb of Jaramana were killed, including local armed fighters and security forces.
The Druze religious sect began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shia Islam. More than half of the roughly 1 million Druze worldwide live in Syria, largely in the southern Sweida province and some suburbs of Damascus.
Most of the other Druze live in Lebanon and Israel, including in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 war and annexed in 1981.
The Syrian government has denied that any of its security forces were involved in the clashes with the Druze, which followed a wave of massacres in March when security forces and allied groups killed more than 1,700 civilians, mostly from Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite community, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Asaad al-Shaibani, the Syrian foreign minister, called for “national unity” on Thursday, as “the solid foundation for any process of stability or revival”.
“Any call for external intervention, under any pretext or slogan, only leads to further deterioration and division,” he wrote on X.
Since the fall of Assad’s regime in December, Israel has launched repeated airstrikes on Syria, destroying military hardware and stockpiles, in what it says is defence of the Druze. Israel has also sent troops to what was a demilitarised zone in the Golan Heights, on Syria’s south-west border with Israel, seizing key strategic terrain where Syrian troops were once deployed.
Analysts in Israel say the strategy aims to undermine the new Syrian government while also protecting and so co-opting a potential proxy ally within the country. The strategy is controversial, however, with some officials arguing that a stable Syria would better serve Israel’s interests.
The Syrian president, Sharaa, told a visiting US congressman last week that Damascus wanted to normalise ties with Israel.
Protesters from the Druze community in Israel temporarily blocked roads on Thursday night and called for the Israeli government to protect the Druze community in Syria.
Underlining the regional dimension of the conflicts involving Israel, Qatar, a main backer of Syria’s new rulers, called Friday’s Israeli airstrike “blatant aggression against the sovereignty” of the country, while warning alarms sounded across much of northern Israel on Friday before air defence systems intercepted a missile that military officials said had been launched from Yemen by Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
The Houthis have repeatedly targeted Israel since the outbreak of the war in Gaza 18 months ago.
