Israel has carried out further air strikes in Syria, Syrian state media is reporting, just hours after the country’s presidency denounced an earlier Israeli attack near the presidential palace in Damascus as a “dangerous escalation”.
Several Israeli military strikes have been reported locally across the country late on Friday, including around Damascus and its vicinity, as well as in the countryside of Hama, about 200km (124 miles) northeast of the capital.
The Israeli Broadcasting Authority says the army identified targets to strike in Syria with the approval of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Israel Katz.
The Israeli military said in a statement that it had attacked a military site in Syria, as well as “anti-aircraft guns and surface-to-air missile infrastructure”.
Reporting from Damascus, Al Jazeera’s Imran Khan said the targets appear to be military sites of the ousted Bashar al-Assad regime. Israel has carried out these types of attacks many times before, Khan explained, as it “does not want a heavily armed Syria on its border”.
Tensions between Israel and Syria have soared this week after the Israeli government accused the Syrian authorities of failing to protect the country’s Druze minority.
The Israeli military carried out strikes near the presidential palace early on Friday in what Israeli leaders said aimed to send “a clear message” to Syria’s transitional government, led by President Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We will not allow [Syrian] forces to deploy south of Damascus or any threat to the Druze community,” Netanyahu said in a joint statement with Katz shortly after the attack.
Later in the day, al-Sharaa’s office described the Israeli military strikes near the palace as a “reprehensible attack [that] reflects the continued reckless actions seeking to destabilise the country and exacerbate security crises”.
“Syria will not compromise its sovereignty or security and will continue to defend the rights of its people by all available means,” it said, urging Arab states and the international community to support the country.
Israel’s attack near the presidential palace was the second of its kind this week.
Meanwhile, reconnaissance aircraft have continuously been flying at low altitudes over the Syrian capital and its countryside since yesterday, Al Jazeera Arabic reported. Sources close to the Syrian government said the drones belong to the Israeli military.
After the Damascus attack, Al Jazeera Arabic, quoting Syrian medical sources, reported four people were killed in an attack Friday by an unknown drone on a farm in the Suwayda countryside.
The Syrian government accused Israel of being behind the attack, according to the Syrian news agency, confirming four civilians were killed today as a result of an Israeli aggression on the village of Kanaker, southwest of Suwayda.
Israeli Army Radio said its forces hadn’t fired in Syria in recent hours.
More than 100 people were killed this week during fighting between pro-government forces and Druze fighters in Syria.
The violence has been condemned as a “genocidal campaign” by Syria’s Druze spiritual leader Sheikh Hikmat al-Hijri, who called for an immediate intervention by “international forces to maintain peace and prevent the continuation of these crimes”.
On Thursday, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar urged the international community to “fulfil its role in protecting the minorities in Syria – especially the Druze – from the regime and its gangs of terror”.
Israel has previously called Syria’s transitional government a “terror group from Idlib that took Damascus by force”.
Reporting earlier on Friday, Al Jazeera’s Khan said the Israeli government had called its strikes near the presidential palace attack “a warning shot” and tied them to its push to pressure the Syrian authorities to protect the Druze community.
“But that’s actually been met with cynicism from senior Druze leaders, saying that [they] actually don’t need Israel to help protect [them],” Khan said.
He added that “intense negotiations” have been taking place between the Syrian Druze community and the government. “This has now led to a calming down of tensions,” Khan said.
Meanwhile, Qatar condemned the Israeli air strikes on Friday, saying the attack was “a blatant aggression” against Syria’s sovereignty and a violation of international law.
The Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs also warned that Israel’s “repeated aggressions” against Syria and Lebanon, coupled with its continued war on the Gaza Strip, “are likely to ignite a cycle of violence and chaos in the region”.
Sectarian violence
The Druze minority are a 10th-century offshoot of a branch of Shia Islam, and live primarily in Syria, Lebanon and Israel, and have been allies of Israel, with many Druze serving in the Israeli military.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani on Thursday called for “national unity” 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.
The sectarian violence poses one of the most serious challenges yet to the government of al-Sharaa, who led a coalition of rebel groups to overthrow Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in December.
Syria has been faced with sectarian violence since then.
The fighting this week follows a massacre in March of more than 1,700 civilians from the Alawite community by security forces and allied groups, according to the United Kingdom-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Alawite, who are traditionally based near the Mediterranean coast in western Syria, are the same ethnic group as the toppled al-Assad.
