Israel has hit Syria’s coastal Tartus region with “the heaviest strikes” in the area in more than a decade, a war monitor group has said.
“Israeli warplanes launched strikes targeting a series of sites including air defence units and ‘surface-to-surface missile depots’”, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, in what it said were “the heaviest strikes in Syria’s coastal region since the start of strikes in 2012”.
The observatory said that “violent explosions” were heard in the coastal city of Tartous “as a result of the successive strikes and the flying of ground-to-ground missiles from the warehouses”.
The US embassy in Damascus advised Americans to leave Syria, saying the security situation there continues to be volatile and unpredictable with armed conflict and “terrorism throughout the country”.
The EU is sending a senior diplomat to Damascus to make contacts with Syria’s new Islamist-led leaders, in a further sign of western engagement after the fall of the dictator Bashar al-Assad.
The EU’s high representative for foreign policy, Kaja Kallas, said she had tasked a top diplomat to go to Damascus on Monday " to make the contacts with the new government and people there”.
She was speaking ahead of a meeting of the EU’s 27 foreign ministers, who she said would discuss how to engage with Syria’s new leadership.
The United Nations intends to offer all kinds of help to the Syrian people, UN Syria envoy Geir Pedersen told Syrian rebel leader Ahmed al-Sharaa and caretaker prime minister Mohammad al-Bashir during a meeting in Damascus, according to a statement released by the UN envoy’s office on Monday.
Elsewhere, at least 12 Palestinians were killed, including children, in an Israeli air strike on a shelter for the displaced in Gaza’s Khan Younis school on Sunday, the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said.
Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said he had a “very friendly, warm and important discussion” with Donald Trump over the weekend about his plans in Syria and efforts to secure the release of hostages in Gaza.
Israel’s government approved a plan on Sunday to expand Israeli settlements on the Golan Heights it occupies, saying it had acted “in light of the war and the new front facing Syria” and out of a desire to double the Israeli population on the Golan.
“Strengthening the Golan is strengthening the State of Israel, and it is especially important at this time. We will continue to hold on to it, cause it to blossom, and settle in it,” Mr Netanyahu said in a statement reported by Reuters.