A massive explosion rocked the Syrian port city of Tartus overnight after an apparent Israeli airstrike, sparking renewed scrutiny of Israel’s actions in Syria after the ouster of Assad.
Footage of the explosion was released as Israel announced plans to double the population of the occupied Golan Heights, citing threats from Syria. The move drew international condemnation and came after Syrian opposition leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani said he had no interest in getting involved in a new conflict.
The London-based war monitoring group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the images emerging from Tartus represented “the most violent Israeli attack on military facilities in the eastern region of Tartus.”
In a video circulating on social media on Monday, a massive explosion can be seen across the Syrian skyline.
NBC News was able to geolocate that this footage was taken from the Port of Tartus area, pointing to the mountains northeast of the city, and the aftermath fire was detected by NASA satellites in an area just over 9 miles from the port. It was done.
The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the video. However, an Israeli official who reviewed the video said the fireball was likely the result of a secondary explosion, citing the possibility that munitions caught fire after the Israeli attack. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss Israeli airstrikes in Syria.
The announcement comes days after satellite images emerged showing Russian troops packing and dismantling military equipment at Russia’s Tartus naval base and Hmeimim air base, located south of Latakia on Syria’s Mediterranean coast. It was.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel’s actions in Syria, which continues to carry out intensive bombing of the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, are aimed at ensuring the country’s security.
“Strengthening the Golan means strengthening the State of Israel, which is especially important at this time,” it said in a statement on Sunday after the Golan government unanimously approved a plan to expand the Israeli population in the region. .
Israel occupied the Golan Heights during the 1967 Middle East war and then annexed the approximately 460 square miles of territory in 1981 in a unilateral decision not recognized by the international community.
In 2019, then-president and then-president-elect Donald Trump broke with the international community and long-standing U.S. precedent and moved toward recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the territory, but this policy shift was reversed by the Biden administration. It wasn’t done.
The decision to expand the Golan Heights’ Israeli population comes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that the collapse of Syria’s Assad regime “has created a vacuum on the Israeli border and the buffer zone established in the 1974 U.S. military separation agreement.” This was done in response to this. This provides for Israel to withdraw from the area of Mount Hermon that it occupied during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
“Israel will not allow jihadist groups to fill the vacuum and threaten Israeli communities in the Golan Heights with attacks like the one on October 7.”
Following this warning, Israeli forces announced that they would remain on Mount Hermon (a strategically important mountain that has been in the buffer zone with Syria for decades) through the winter after occupying it.
Jolani said on Saturday that Israel was using false pretexts to justify attacks on the country, according to Reuters. But he said his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group had no interest in getting involved in a new conflict as the country seeks to rebuild after the end of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. Ta.
HTS, which has roots in Islamic extremist movements, remains a globally designated terrorist organization, and in 2018 the United States placed a $10 million bounty on Jolani’s head.
The former al-Qaeda fighter has projected a more moderate image and pledged to be inclusive of the religions and ethnic groups represented in Syria. The Biden administration has said it is considering removing HTS from its list of terrorist organizations.
By Monday, plans to expand the Israeli population in the Golan Heights and Israel’s airstrikes on Syria over the weekend had begun to draw international backlash, with Turkey’s Foreign Ministry denouncing it as “a new phase in Israel’s goals.” Expanding borders through occupation. ”
“Israel’s ongoing actions are seriously undermining efforts to bring peace and stability to Syria and further escalating tensions in the region,” Turkey’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Monday.
Last week, UN Secretary-General António Guterres announced that he was “deeply concerned” by the “recent and widespread violations” of Syria’s sovereignty, halted airstrikes against Israel following the ouster of President Assad, and announced that This follows a call to march.
Contributions were made by Mateo Moschella, Omer Bekin and Raf Sánchez.
