“The territory of Syria has been targeted 63 times, including 50 airstrikes and 10 ground attacks, resulting in the death and martyrdom of 35 people,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor.
The now-dissolved Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), headed by Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, spearheaded a coalition of opposition groups in early December that toppled Assad’s regime.
Since then, Israel has intensified efforts to destroy Damascus’s military stockpiles, and Israeli forces have entered a buffer zone east of the annexed Golan Heights, justifying their actions as a security precaution amid Syria’s ongoing political instability.
The death toll included 15 civilians and nine soldiers of Syria’s new army, according to the Observatory.
“Israeli aircraft also launched approximately 500 airstrikes on military sites, destroying Syria’s entire weapons arsenal,” it added.
Israel has refused to establish ties with the interim government in Damascus, with several Israeli officials calling the new Syrian authorities extremists.
But US President Donald Trump is trying to mend ties between the two countries. On May 14, he called on Sharaa to normalize ties with Israel during a meeting in Riyadh hosted by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and attended remotely by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
In a statement following the meeting, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the time that Trump urged Sharaa to “sign onto the Abraham Accords with Israel.”
The Abraham Accords are a series of normalization agreements between Israel and several Arab countries - beginning with the UAE and Bahrain in 2020 - brokered by the US during Trump’s first term in office. These accords established formal ties in areas like diplomacy, security, and trade.
