Israeli army carries out strikes on military sites in southern Syria

The Israeli military announced today that it carried out airstrikes on military targets in southern Syria overnight.

"Tonight, Israeli Air Force fighter jets struck radar and detection equipment in southern Syria," the Israeli military said.

It added that command posts and locations containing weapons and military equipment belonging to the Syrian regime in the south of the country were hit. It said the targets were targeted to "eliminate future threats."

Syrian official media reported last night that Israel had carried out multiple strikes in the province of Deraa, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that 17 attacks were carried out on military positions of the former army of Bashar al-Assad, specifically on observation platforms and tanks.

Immediately after the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad on December 8, Israel sent troops into the demilitarized Golan buffer zone in southwestern Syria, on the edge of part of the plateau that Israel had occupied since the 1967 war and annexed in 1981.

Since then, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on military positions of the former Syrian authorities, claiming the aim is to prevent their arsenal from falling into the hands of the new authorities.

On February 23, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for the complete demilitarization of southern Syria, that is, the part that abuts Israeli territory, and said that his country would not tolerate the deployment of forces of the new Syrian authorities south of Damascus.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sarr recently called for caution towards the new Syrian authorities, which he said are now under the leadership of "jihadists."

During the Syrian civil war that began under President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, Israel carried out hundreds of strikes on positions of the Syrian army and its allies, particularly Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iran.