AQRABA, Syria — Status some 40 ft from the charred stays of the Syrian air drive helicopter, Ahmad Abu Leyl, a tender revolt fighter, cocked his ear, listening for the feature humming of an Israeli drone overhead.“I don’t need to get nearer,” he stated. “They could hit this position once more in the event that they see we’re close to.” Then he climbed on his bike, gunned the engine and sped away.It were a troublesome evening for Abu Leyl and the small detachment of revolt opponents tasked with protective the Aqraba army air base simply 3 miles southeast of the brink of the capital, Damascus. They’d arrived right here early Monday, an afternoon after the Syrian military crumbled — along side the brutally repressive govt of Bashar Assad — and the rebels swept into energy. 
Israel assaults Syrian army arsenals at Aqrabah army airbase All used to be calm in the beginning, with Abu Leyl and his fellow rebels doing little greater than preventing the occasional trespasser from looting the deserted barracks and officer’s quarters. Then early Tuesday morning, a sequence of explosions became the bottom’s final useful helicopters — a couple of Soviet-era Mi-8s — into blazing husks.It used to be a part of an enormous, multiday airstrike marketing campaign through Israel that noticed its air drive and military hit greater than 350 goals around the nation since Saturday, destroying an estimated 70% of Syria’s strategic army functions, in keeping with the Israeli army.“There have been such a lot of blasts we didn’t sleep,” stated Abu Leyl, who gave a nom de guerre as a result of he used to be now not approved to talk to the media. Just one forlorn-looking Mi-8 remained at the tarmac, however Abu Leyl brushed aside it.“It doesn’t even paintings,” he stated. “I assume that’s why they didn’t trouble bombing it.”Israel is doing the entirety it may possibly to stop Syria’s new leaders — Islamists who hint their roots to Al Qaeda however say they’ve moderated their perspectives — from inheriting the outdated govt’s really extensive arsenal. The Israeli army stated it focused Syrian antiaircraft batteries, missile depots, production amenities, drones, helicopters, fighter jets, tanks, hangars, radars and 15 naval vessels. 
A Syrian opposition fighter tears a portray depicting Syria’s overthrown President Bashar Assad and his overdue father, Hafez Assad, at Aleppo Global Airport on Dec. 2, 2024. (Ghaith Alsayed / Related Press) He known as on “either side” to uphold a disengagement settlement between Israel and Syria that adopted the 1973 Yom Kippur Conflict and that the U.N. says Israel is now violating.Israel’s assaults also are geared toward combating Iran from protecting a foothold in Syria.Underneath Assad, Syria used to be a part of Iran’s “axis of resistance,” a community of regional governments and paramilitary factions Tehran wielded in opposition to the U.S. and Israel. Syria’s territory used to be used as a logistical passageway for the Lebanese Shiite militant team Hezbollah, which has been at warfare with Israel since October 2023.The connection went each techniques, with Hezbollah opponents serving as surprise troops that reinforced Assad’s flagging military — an intervention the crowd justified as protective Shiite minorities and shrines in Syria from Islamist and jihadi factions within the opposition.In the previous couple of weeks, Israel has many times hit border crossings between Syria and Lebanon that it stated had been getting used to smuggle guns for Hezbollah’s arsenal.Israel’s contemporary airstrikes have additionally had an impact at the team’s presence in Syria, pushing lots of its leaders and cadres to escape again to Lebanon. 
Israeli infantrymen stand subsequent to a automobile close to the so-called Alpha Line that separates the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights from Syria, on Dec. 10, 2024. (Matias Delacroix / Related Press) “Hezbollah? All of them went house,” stated Rabie, a 39-year-old resident close to Sayeda Zainab, a Shiite shrine south of Damascus, who gave simplest his first title. “We awoke this morning and none of them are round.”In a observation Tuesday, Israeli High Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated Israel sought after to have “members of the family” with Syria’s new govt. “But when this regime permits Iran to reestablish itself in Syria, or permits the switch of Iranian guns, or guns of any type, to Hezbollah, or assaults us — we can reply forcefully and we can actual a heavy worth,” he stated.Occasions workforce author Tracy Wilkinson in Washington contributed to this record.
