Israel says it will destroy Syria's heavy strategic weaponry

Israel will step up airstrikes on Syrian stores of advanced weaponry, Israeli officials said on Monday, and keep a 'limited' troop presence on the ground, hoping to head off any threat that could emerge in the fallout of former president Bashar al-Assad's overthrow.

Israel has watched the upheaval in Syria with a mixture of hope and concern as it weighs the consequences of one of the most significant strategic shifts in the Middle East in years.

While Assad's fall wiped out a bastion from which Israel's arch-foe Iran had exercised influence in the region, the lightning advance of a disparate group of rebel forces with roots in the Islamist ideology of Al Qaeda poses risks.

Defense Minister Israel Katz said the military would "destroy heavy strategic weapons throughout Syria, including surface-to-air missiles, air defense systems, surface-to-surface missiles, cruise missiles, long-range rockets, and coastal missiles."

A senior Israeli official said airstrikes would persist in the coming days, while Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar said Israel had no interest in interfering in internal Syrian affairs and was concerned only with defending its citizens.

"That's why we attack strategic weapons systems like, for example, remaining chemical weapons or long-range missiles and rockets in order that they will not fall into the hands of extremists," Sa'ar told reporters in Jerusalem.

Still reeling from Hamas's attack on October 7 of last year, Israel is also looking to head off any future threat from its neighbor.

Israeli forces had already cleared landmines and established new barriers on the frontier between the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and a demilitarized strip bordering Syria in October.

IDF sends troops to demilitarized zone

Early on Sunday, the military said it had sent ground forces into the demilitarized zone, a 400-sq-km (155-sq-mile) buffer created by a 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement and overseen by the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF).

The military on Monday published photos of Israeli commandos in the Syrian Mount Hermon area.

Sa'ar said the troop presence was strictly limited. "It's basically near our borders, sometimes a few hundred meters, sometimes one mile or two miles," he said. "It is a very limited and temporary step we took for security reasons."