An Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strike targeted an air defence installation near Syria’s Mediterranean Latakia port, said Syrian security sources on Monday.
Israel was now more optimistic about a possible hostage deal in Gaza, said Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Monday, amid reports that Hamas had asked for lists of all hostages still held by militant groups in the Palestinian enclave.
Hamas congratulated the Syrian people on Monday for achieving their “aspirations for freedom and justice” after toppling President Bashar al-Assad.
Israeli strike targets air defence installation in Syria
An Israeli strike targeted an air defence installation near Syria’s Mediterranean Latakia port, said Syrian security sources on Monday.
Israel conducted three airstrikes in the Syrian capital a day earlier, against a security complex and a government research centre which it has said in the past was used by Iran to develop missiles, two regional security sources told Reuters on Sunday.
Earlier on Sunday, Israel struck at least seven targets in southwest Syria that included the Khalkhala air base north of Sweida city, said the sources.
The strikes came after Syrian rebels overthrew President Bashar al-Assad, which Israel has watched with a mixture of hope and concern.
Israel has been carrying out strikes against Iran-linked targets in Syria for years but has ramped up such raids since last year’s 7 October attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Israeli territory that sparked the Gaza war.
Israel ‘more optimistic’ about prospects of Gaza hostage deal
Israel was now more optimistic about a possible hostage deal in Gaza, said Foreign Minister Gideon Saar on Monday, amid reports that Hamas had asked for lists of all hostages still held by militant groups in the Palestinian enclave.
He said indirect negotiations were under way about the return of about 100 hostages and that, while it was still too early to be sure, prospects had improved.
“We can be more optimistic than before but we are not there yet. I hope we will be there,” Saar told a press conference in Jerusalem, reiterating Israel’s position that the hostages still held in Gaza must be returned before Israel agrees to an end to the fighting.
“There will not be a ceasefire in Gaza without a hostage deal,” he said.
A Palestinian official with knowledge of the mediation effort said Hamas had asked other factions in Gaza to start listing the names of Israeli and foreign hostages in their custody, whether dead or alive.
The official gave no further details of the mediation effort but said the mediators, backed by the US, had stepped up contacts with Israel and Hamas.
Hamas officials declined immediate comment.
An official of a militant group allied with Hamas expressed hope that talks could lead to a deal.
Hamas gunmen took over 250 hostages back to Gaza after their attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which killed some 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. More than 44,700 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive on Gaza that followed, say Gaza health authorities.
Some hostage families voiced cautious optimism after meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday. Netanyahu told them the time had come for a hostage deal, said the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
Each side accuses the other of standing in the way of a deal but Saar said Hamas’ previous position “might have changed during recent times”.
“So if both parties are interested in an agreement, there is a better chance it will be achieved,” he said.
Israeli strikes across Gaza continued overnight and on Monday, said medics. One strike killed at least four people near Jabalia camp on the northern edge of the enclave, they said.
In Rafah, near the southern Gaza border with Egypt, health officials said rescue teams had recovered at least 11 bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli airstrikes overnight and on Monday.
Residents of Al-Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip said some Israeli tanks pushed into the eastern area of the camp early on Monday, forcing some residents to flee their homes.
Later on Monday, medics said an Israeli strike in Al-Maghazi killed four children aged between four and 13, while an airstrike in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip killed six people.
The Israeli military has not commented on Monday’s strikes on Gaza.
Hamas congratulates Syrians on ending Assad’s rule
Hamas congratulated the Syrian people on Monday for achieving their “aspirations for freedom and justice” after toppling Assad.
It was Hamas’ first public comment since rebel forces swept into the Syrian capital Damascus on Sunday after a lightning advance that sent Assad fleeing to Russia after a 13-year civil war and six decades of his family’s autocratic rule.
“We stand strongly with the great people of Syria ... and respect the will, the independence, and the political choices of the people of Syria,” the Islamist faction that has been governing the Gaza Strip said in a statement.
Hamas said it hoped that post-Assad Syria would continue “its historical and pivotal role in supporting the Palestinian people”.
In a separate statement, Ziad al-Nakhala, head of the Islamic Jihad, an Iranian-backed group and an ally of Hamas, echoed that sentiment.
“The Islamic Jihad hopes Syria will remain a real support for the Palestinian people, their just cause, as it has always been,” said Nakhala.
Hamas publicly endorsed the 2011 Sunni Muslim street uprising against Assad’s rule and vacated its Damascus headquarters in 2012, a move that angered Iran, an ally of both Assad and the Palestinian group.
Hamas, whose ideological roots stem from the Sunni Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, distanced itself from Assad — a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam — as he cracked down on the mainly Sunni Muslim protesters and rebels.
The Palestinian group decided in 2022 to restore ties with the Assad government and sent a delegation to Damascus, where Hamas leaders met Assad in the hope of repairing relations.
Assad’s Syria and Iran formed an “axis of resistance” with Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and Palestinian militant groups to oppose Israel.
Hamas’s positive response to the fall of Assad contrasted with that of Shi’ite Muslim Hezbollah, which played a major part in propping up Assad through years of war. Assad’s Syria long served as a vital conduit for Iran to supply arms to the group.
A senior Hezbollah politician on Monday described events in Syria as a “major, dangerous and new transformation”.
Assad’s fall weakens Iran but may fuel Islamist resurgence
The ouster of Assad, after rebel forces swept into Damascus this weekend, shattered Iran’s network of influence in the Middle East but Israel, the US and Arab powers must now deal with the risk of instability and extremism from the mosaic of forces that replaces him.
Chief among the rebel forces that ended 50 years of brutal dynastic rule by Assad and his father was Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a Sunni Muslim group previously affiliated with Al-Qaeda that is designated as a terrorist organisation by the US and the UN.
Western and Arab nations fear that the HTS-led rebel coalition may seek to replace Assad’s regime with a hardline Islamist government, or one less able or inclined to prevent the resurgence of radical forces, three diplomats and three analysts told Reuters.
“There is strong fear inside and outside the region of the power vacuum that Assad’s sudden collapse may cause,” said Abdelaziz al-Sager, director of the Gulf Research Center, a think tank focused on the Middle East. He cited the civil wars that followed the toppling of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein in 2003 and Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
One senior Western diplomat in the region, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that — with the rebel forces fragmented — there was no plan for how to rule Syria, a complex nation divided into various sects and ethnic groups, each with its own regional power base.
The senior diplomat expressed fears that lawlessness in Syria could allow the flourishing of extremist groups like Islamic State (IS), which in 2014 swept through large swathes of Syria and Iraq and established an Islamic Caliphate before it was driven out by a US-led coalition by 2019.
US President Joe Biden on Sunday welcomed Assad’s toppling and said he should be “held accountable” for his despotic rule but he warned that his departure was a moment of “risk and uncertainty”. US forces on Sunday conducted dozens of strikes within Syria against IS to prevent it from reasserting itself.
The speed of Assad’s ouster, just two weeks since the rebel offensive began, took many in the White House by surprise. A senior US official said Washington was now seeking ways to communicate with all the rebel groups, not just HTS.
So far, Washington has mostly thrown its support behind Syrian Kurdish groups, such as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), whose areas of control are in northeast Syria. These groups, however, are in conflict with one of the main victorious rebel factions, the Syrian National Army (SNA), backed by regional power broker, Turkey, which opposes Kurdish influence.
Assad’s allies, Tehran and Moscow, which propped up his rule for 13 years with military support, men and airpower, also face far-reaching implications from his precipitous downfall.
Moscow — which has given Assad and his family asylum — has two major military bases in Syria, its main footprint in the Middle East. Its naval base in Tartous on the Mediterranean has been a staging post to fly military contractors in and out of Africa.
For Tehran, its alliance with Assad — a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam — was a cornerstone of its powerbase in a predominantly Sunni region wary of Shi’ite Iran.
Assad’s departure shattered a pivotal axis of influence, eroding Tehran’s ability to project power and sustain its network of militia groups across the Middle East, particularly to its ally Hezbollah in Lebanon. A senior Iranian official told Reuters on Monday it had opened a direct line of communication with the rebels in an attempt to “prevent a hostile trajectory”.
Israel’s year-long military campaign has already severely weakened the military power of Hezbollah and Hamas in Gaza.
Assad offered Iran a vital conduit for arms shipments to rebuild Hezbollah. Jonathan Panikoff, a former US deputy national intelligence officer for the Middle East, said his ouster could make it more difficult for Hezbollah to rearm, increasing the prospects that a ceasefire with Israel agreed last month would hold.
Putin made decision to grant Assad asylum in Russia, says Kremlin
The Kremlin said on Monday that President Vladimir Putin had made the decision to grant asylum in Russia to Assad.
Russian news agencies cited an unidentified Kremlin source on Sunday as saying Assad was in Moscow with his family.
“Such decisions cannot be made without the head of state. This is his decision,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters but gave no further details on Assad’s movements.
Four Israeli soldiers killed in accidental explosion in Lebanon
Four Israeli soldiers who were killed in southern Lebanon were probably killed in an accidental detonation of explosives as they demolished a Hezbollah tunnel laden with weapons, Israel’s Army Radio reported on Monday.
The Israeli military said that four soldiers fell in combat, without providing further details. Army Radio said that the incident happened on Sunday and that an initial review found that the detonation set off secondary explosions, leading to the collapse of the tunnel while the soldiers were in it. DM
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