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IDF Reportedly Targets Hezbollah Site Near Damascus
Illustrative. Damaged buildings are shown after what Syrian authorities said was an Israeli air strike in the western suburbs of Damascus, Syria in this handout released by state news agency SANA on April 27, 2020. SANA/Handout via REUTERS
JNS.org – The Israel Defense Forces conducted a targeted strike on an apartment in Sayyidah Zaynab, a hub for Iranian terrorist activity south of Damascus, Syrian state media claimed on Sunday afternoon.
Syria’s SANA news agency, citing a military source, reported that the Israeli Air Force targeted a building “in the Sayyidah Zaynab area of the Damascus countryside, resulting in a number of martyrs and wounded.”
IAF fighter jets targeted two buildings occupied by Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorists, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based war monitor affiliated with Syria’s opposition.
“The Israeli missiles targeted specific individuals in an apartment in one of the buildings, killing three people and injuring others,” the NGO said.
Israel rarely acknowledges attacks in Syria, although in February, Jerusalem revealed that it had struck more than 50 targets belonging to Hezbollah and other Iran-backed terrorist organizations in Syria since Oct. 7, 2023.
On Nov. 5, IAF fighter jets launched renewed raids on Hezbollah targets in the Syrian town of Al-Qusayr, near the border with Lebanon, attacking munitions depots used by the Lebanese terrorist army.
“Hezbollah’s Munitions Unit is responsible for storing weapons inside Lebanon and has recently expanded its activities into the area of Al-Qusayr, near the Syria-Lebanon border,” the military confirmed on X.
Israeli jets previously struck terrorism-related targets in Al-Qusayr on Oct. 31, including arms-storage facilities, and command and control centers used by Hezbollah’s elite Radwan Force and its Munitions Unit.
On Nov. 4, the IAF attacked Hezbollah’s local intelligence headquarters in Sayyidah Zaynab. The site, located about six miles south of Damascus, was operating as “Hezbollah’s central intelligence body, responsible for intelligence assessments, the direction of intelligence activities, and the intelligence gathering and detection capabilities,” the IDF said.
Earlier this month, the IDF revealed that its forces captured a pro-Iranian regime terrorist operative during a raid in Syria. The raid was carried out by members of the Egoz commando unit along with field interrogators of the Military Intelligence Directorate’s Unit 504.
Ali Soleiman al-Assi, a Syrian from Saida in the southern part of the country, was tasked by Iran with “gathering intelligence on IDF troops in the border area for future terror activity of the network,” the military said.
“The operation prevented a future attack and led to the exposure of the operational methods of Iranian terror networks located near the Golan Heights. Al-Assi was transferred for further questioning,” it added.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
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