…Sends troops over the border
Israel said it has struck chemical weapons stockpiles, and Israeli troops crossed into Syrian territory for the first time in 50 years after an Islamist rebel force seized the capital, Damascus, on Sunday and toppled President Bashar al-Assad.
Gideon Sa’ar, Israel’s foreign minister, told reporters Israel attacked Syria’s “strategic weapons systems,” including stockpiles of chemical weapons and long-range missiles and rockets, “in order that they will not fall in the hands of extremists.”
The strikes came after the Syrian Islamist movement Hayat Tahrir al-Sham made an extraordinary march from its base in the northwest and took Damascus in less than two weeks, sending Assad into reported exile in Russia.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said Israel 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.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also said he had ordered troops from the Golan Heights into Syrian territory, where they seized positions abandoned by Syria’s military “to ensure that no hostile force embeds itself right next to the border of Israel,” he said. (Golan was annexed by Israel and is considered by most of the world to be occupied Syrian territory.)
Netanyahu called the incursion a “temporary defensive position until a suitable arrangement is found.”