IDF prepares for days of battles in Sweida, carries out aerial strikes on 160 Syrian targets

As of Wednesday afternoon, the IDF had undertaken 160 aerial attacks on Syrian regime forces in and around the vicinity of Sweida in southern Syria, where Israel says the regime’s forces are slaughtering Syrian Druze.

In addition, the IDF has attacked, and possibly destroyed, Syria’s Defense Ministry, and also attacked part of the Presidential Palace in Damascus. Dozens or more Syrian regime forces are said to have been killed in IDF attacks. IDF sources said that the military is ready for a multi-day campaign to convince Syrian regime forces to withdraw from Sweida and leave the Syrian Druze their autonomy.

However, the IDF said that the situation for the Syrian Druze is desperate and that despite aerial attacks, if on Tuesday, the Druze controlled around 70% of Sweida, by Wednesday, regime forces controlled around 70% of the city. In addition, the IDF said that the regime has around 200 militia men committing atrocities against the Druze in Sweida, while another 1,000 more official Syrian regime army forces have the city surrounded and cut off. 

 The IDF implied that the Syrian regime may use this model to try to have plausible deniability that it was not directly involved in atrocities, but the military said that intelligence suggests that the mixing of using militias to do the regime’s dirty work appears to have been planned. At the same time, the IDF did not accuse the Syrian regime of provoking the current crisis. (Read More)