Israeli troops raid site deep inside Syria, Damascus says
The hourslong ground operation overnight was backed by airstrikes, according to Syrian state media. Israeli forces have rarely ventured so far into Syria since the fall of Assad.
TEL AVIV—Israeli troops carried out an overnight raid on a site near Damascus, Syrian state media said, a rare ground operation deep inside Syrian territory that comes amid U.S. efforts to end hostilities between the two countries following the Assad regime’s fall late last year.
The hourslong raid, which was backed by Israeli airstrikes, took place near the town of Kiswah, in the Damascus suburbs, the Syrian foreign ministry said. Syrian soldiers on Tuesday uncovered surveillance and eavesdropping devices near the site, state news agency SANA reported. After the discovery, Israel targeted the area with airstrikes, resulting in the deaths of at least six Syrian soldiers, state media said.
The Israeli military declined to comment on the operation.
Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz, said in an X post Thursday that his country’s forces are “operating in all of the theaters of battle day and night for the security of Israel."
Syria and Israel have been bitter enemies for decades and fought three major wars against each other. After Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad was ousted in December, Israel and Syria have held U.S.-backed discussions about reaching a security arrangement, people briefed on the negotiations told The Wall Street Journal in June.
Israel is demanding Syria demilitarize the entire border area between Israel and the Syrian capital of Damascus. Israeli officials say they don’t yet trust Syria’s new leaders, whose roots are in Jihadi groups. The Trump administration, however, has embraced Syria’s new government and is taking steps to stabilize its rule.
Israel appears to be aiming to boost its intelligence capabilities inside Syria before reaching a security agreement with Syria that would force the removal of Israel’s forces and limit its operations in the country, said Carmit Valensi, head of the Syria program at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies. The Israeli strikes were likely intended to prevent Israeli intelligence-gathering devices from falling into Syrian hands, Valensi said.
“Israel is starting to acknowledge its military presence there is temporary and will be over soon if there’s a security pact," Valensi said.
Israeli forces have carried out numerous operations inside Syria in recent months aimed at destroying the remnants of the Assad regime’s military and Iranian-backed forces that had built up in southern Syria over the past decade.
Syria’s new government has condemned and protested the Israeli operations at the United Nations but hasn’t publicly responded militarily.
Syria’s foreign ministry on Wednesday called the latest Israeli strikes “a grave violation of international law" and a “clear breach" of Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Since the fall of the Assad regime, Israel has launched 421 ground incursions and 954 airstrikes, according to data compiled by Charles Lister, a Syria analyst who runs the Syria Weekly newsletter. Many of those strikes and raids have been carried out near the border. Israel’s military has also occupied parts of southern Syria, expanding a security zone into Syrian territory.
Valensi said the overnight raid in Kiswah was the first publicly known Israeli ground operation that took place far from the Israeli occupied territory in southern Syria since the fall of the Assad regime.
Last September, before the fall of the Assad regime, Israeli special forces were helicoptered into the western Syrian city of Masyaf where they raided and destroyed an Iranian missile factory.
Write to Dov Lieber at [email protected]
