Israel has confirmed it carried out attacks on Syria’s naval fleet, as part of its efforts to neutralise military assets in the country after the fall of the Assad regime. In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces IDF said its ships struck the ports at Al-Bayda and Latakia on Monday night, where 15 vessels were docked. The BBC has verified videos showing blasts at the port of Latakia, with footage appearing to show extensive damage to ships and parts of the port. The IDF also said its warplanes had conducted more than 350 air strikes on targets across Syria, while moving ground forces into the demilitarised buffer zone between Syria and the occupied Golan Heights.

Earlier, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights SOHR said it had documented more than 310 strikes by the IDF since the Syrian government was overthrown by rebels on Sunday. In a statement, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz said the IDF was aiming to “destroy strategic capabilities that threaten the State of Israel The IDF said a wide range of targets had been struck – including airfields, military vehicles, anti-aircraft weapons and arms production sites – in the Syrian capital, Damascus, as well as Homs, Tartus and Palmyra.

It also targeted weapon warehouses, ammunition depots and “dozens” of sea-to-sea missiles. It added that it had done so to prevent them “from falling into the hands of extremists In a video message, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Syrian rebel group that ousted President Bashar al-Assad, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham HTS that Israel would “respond forcefully” if they allow Iran to “re-establish itself in Syria He has previously expressed a desire for peaceful ties with the new Syrian government, and cast its interventions as defensive.

Rami Abdul Rahman, the founder of the SOHR, described the impact of the strikes as destroying “all the capabilities of the Syrian army” and said that “Syrian lands are being violated Meanwhile, the IDF also confirmed it had troops operating in Syrian territory beyond the buffer zone bordering the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. The IDF acknowledged that its troops had entered Syrian territory but told the BBC that reports of tanks approaching Damascus were “false”.

It said some troops had been stationed within the Area of Separation that borders the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights “and then a few additional points When we say a few additional points, we’re talking the area of the Area of Separation, or the area of the buffer zone in vicinity,” IDF spokesperson Nadav Shoshani told the BBC. BBC Verify has geolocated an image of an IDF soldier standing just over half a kilometre beyond the demilitarized buffer zone in the Golan Heights, inside Syria on a hillside near the village of Kwdana.  (BBC)