Two days of attacks, more than 250 targets: The Air Force has launched a large-scale attack across Syria against targets and tools used by the Assad army so that they will not fall into the hands of the rebels and will no longer be a threat against Israel. “This is one of the largest attacks in the history of the Air Force,” an IDF official described, saying that the purpose of the attacks was to ensure the weakening of the forces in Syria, and those who would eventually take the reins of government, for a long time.
Among the targets attacked by the Air Force are the Syrian Air Force, which has lost dozens of aircraft; the Syrian air defense system, one of the largest and most developed in the world, which has been almost completely destroyed by the IDF; armored personnel carriers, tanks and land army sites, including central bases; Production sites and weapons warehouses, advanced missile warehouses that have been a threat to Israel for decades; and according to some reports, sites with unconventional weapons, most notably the chemical weapons that Assad stockpiled over the years, and even used on various occasions against his own people.
The IDF in the buffer zone
In parallel with the aerial activities taking place over the entire Syrian skies, IDF ground forces are operating in the border area between the two countries. In the past two days, the IDF has taken over the demilitarized buffer zone established between Israel and Syria in the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement, following the Yom Kippur War – an agreement that Israel now considers invalid, in light of the fall of the regime that signed it. Among other things, Israeli forces captured the peak of the Hermon – about 10 kilometers from the Israeli Hermon, and at a height of 2.8 kilometers above sea level.
According to reports in the Lebanese media last night, IDF armored forces continued to advance beyond the buffer zone into the Syrian Golan Heights, and are now only 20 kilometers away from Damascus, the capital. These reports have been denied by security sources and commentators, who claim that the IDF did not leave the buffer zone – 30 kilometers from Damascus.
