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The United Nations said on Tuesday that Israel must stop its attacks on Syria after its forces attacked military targets and occupied territory in Syria after the regime of President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown.
The United Nations envoy to Syria, Geir Pedersen, warned that Israeli attacks and incursions could undermine the chances of a peaceful transition in the fragile country after rebels overthrew Assad on Sunday.
“We need to see Israel stop its attacks,” Pedersen said. “It is extremely important that we see no action by any international actor to undermine the possibility of such a shift in Syria.”
Israel has reportedly struck hundreds of military targets linked to Assad in recent days, in what local media said was Israel’s largest airstrike in Syria.
The Israel Defense Forces described the targets as “strategically important” and Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Tuesday that Israel had “achieved great success” in “destroying” Syria’s modest navy.
Over the weekend, Israeli ground forces also crossed the border from the occupied Golan Heights into the previously demilitarized buffer zone of more than 200 square kilometers in Syria, occupying abandoned positions of the Syrian army.
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Katz said on Tuesday that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered the military to “create a sterile defense zone in southern Syria, free of weapons and terrorist threats.”
On Tuesday, IDF spokesman Avicai Adelaei denied reports that troops were advancing toward the Syrian capital Damascus, saying his forces were “stationed in the buffer zone and at defensive points close to the border to protect Israel’s borders.”
However, another Israeli military spokesman acknowledged that while most ground force operations were conducted within the buffer zone, some units also operated “outside” the area.
Israel occupied much of the Golan Heights in a six-day war in 1967, but its claim to the land has not been recognized by the international community. The last time Israeli ground forces entered Syrian territory beyond the Golan Heights was during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
The IDF incursion into the buffer zone drew condemnation from other countries in the region, with Turkey’s foreign ministry saying on Tuesday that “Israel has once again shown an occupier mentality”.
Israel has been conducting airstrikes in Syria for more than a decade, targeting Iranian-affiliated weapons sites. Iran and its backed militant groups, including the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, deployed in Syria to support the Assad regime during the Syrian civil war.
“Control of the Golan Heights ensures our security; it ensures our sovereignty,” Netanyahu said at a news conference on Monday night.
“The Golan Heights will always be an integral part of the State of Israel,” he added.
Israel’s foreign and defense ministers said on Monday that the airstrikes targeted remnants of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile.
A person familiar with developments in Syria added that Israel also attacked the remnants of the Syrian air force, including grounded aircraft and helicopters.
The operation comes as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel faction that led the offensive to oust Assad, is seeking to consolidate control of Syria amid concerns that a regime change could exacerbate regional instability.
Mohammed al-Bashir, the head of Syria’s Salvation Government (HTS’s de facto civilian administration in the northwestern province of Idlib), has announced that he will lead an interim caretaker government for the whole of Syria, which “may” start on March 1 next year end of day.
Assad’s regime, which had ruled Syria for 50 years, was overthrown and HTS’s lightning offensive swept across the country in two weeks.
When HTS took control of Damascus on Sunday, Assad fled to Russia, which has backed him in Syria’s 13-year civil war.
In a statement posted on a rebel-run social media channel, HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani pledged to hold “criminals, murderers, and military and security officials involved in the torture of the Syrian people” to account.
He added: “We will hunt down war criminals and claim them from the countries to which they fled.”
HTS has granted an amnesty to conscripted members of Assad’s army, while state agencies have ordered the resumption of public services and activities in the oil sector, which is vital to the economy.
Opposition groups opened so-called resettlement centers, demanding members of the former regime show up.
Fighters and Syrian civilians have also opened the Assad regime’s notorious prisons, freeing prisoners including political prisoners held for decades and uncovering evidence of torture.
However, traffic began to increase on the streets of Damascus on Tuesday as residents tentatively began to return to normal life. Some shops and restaurants have reopened, and government employees are starting to return to work.
Police from Syria’s Salvation Army were directing traffic in the city, while rebel fighters helped guard government ministries, some of which were looted and broken into during the rebel offensive.
Additional reporting by Richard Salam in Beirut
