Israel Attacks Military Sites in Northwestern Syria

Since the regime change in Syria in December, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes against former military targets, in addition to an ongoing ground invasion in the south. Multiple Israeli airstrikes were reported today in the northwest, in the Latakia and Tartus Governorates.

The main focus of the attacks was on the outskirts of the port city of Tartus, where explosions were reported. Heavy Israeli military aircraft presence was reported by locals, and a lot of reports were rather unspecific about what exactly was hit there, beyond reports that it likely included military sites near the coastline, based on where the smoke was rising. No casualties are believed to have occurred, however, though civil defense teams have been dispatched to the area.

The other noteworthy target was about 60 km north of Tartus, in the town of Qardahah in Latakia Governorate. There, Israeli warplanes reportedly attacked the infrastructure of a site “containing weapons” that they had attacked in the past.

Details on the Qardahah strike are still emerging too, though Israel has issued statement on the matter, claiming the decision to attack the infrastructure at the site was based on the “latest developments in the area.” The statement didn’t elaborate on what that meant, nor did Israel elaborate on what it attacked in Tartus, only confirming it attacked “the surrounding” of that city.

There aren’t major specific changes that have been reported in Qardahah before today’s attacks, though last week troops loyal to the Islamist government in Syria attacked and killed a number of people, including a former Assad-era naval officer, at a military checkpoint.

That isn’t so much a development as a continuation of a trend for the Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) since taking power. Attacks against Shi’ite and especially Alawite towns across northwestern Syria have been a regular occurrence, and Qardahah is a major Alawite town.

Ousted President Bashar al-Assad was an Alawite, and in the revelry over taking the country, one of the first things HTS did was burn the tomb of Assad’s father Hafez al-Assad. That tomb was also located in Qardahah in which Hafez was born.

Most Alawites that weren’t specifically related to the Assad family didn’t have it great during the Assad-era, but have found it much worse since his ouster, as HTS and its allies have taken to attacking the minority as a way to spite the former government.

Recent Israeli intervention in southern Syria has been presented as protecting the Druze minority from the HTS. Yet in the northwest, Israeli strikes don’t even nominally have such a pretext, as Israel is generally as hostile to Alawites as they are to Sunni Islamists, and they view the Alawite minority as tantamount to Shi’ites, and subsequently Iran-related.