A vandalized portrait of former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, bearing the word "free" and accompanied by the new Syrian flag at the entrance of Damascus, on June 3, 2025. (Credit: Louai Beshara/AFP)
The Israeli army announced Sunday that it had hit a Hamas member in the Mazraat Beit Jin region in southern Syria, days after Israel conducted its first airstrikes in the country in nearly a month.
Israeli aviation carried out strikes on a weapons depot belonging to the new Syrian regime in the south of Syria overnight Tuesday to Wednesday in retaliation for the firing of two projectiles towards its territory. According to Israeli media, the projectiles fired Tuesday night were the first launched from Syria towards Israeli territory since the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz had then considered that Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa was "directly responsible for any threat or firing directed against the State of Israel."
The Syrian authorities subsequently assured they posed "no threat to anyone" in the region.
Two unknown groups claimed the firing in messages on social media. The "Martyr Mohammed Deif Brigades," named after the chief of Hamas's armed wing, killed by Israel in Gaza, posted a video showing the moment rockets landed on the Golan Heights. A second group, the "Islamic Resistance Front in Syria," established a few months ago, also claimed the firing.
Since the fall of Assad, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syrian territory, targeting military sites. Israel has also sent troops into a U.N.-monitored buffer zone on the Golan Heights and beyond. But Sharaa assures that his country does not want an escalation with its neighbors.
U.S. President Donald Trump had assured after a meeting with the Syrian leader in May that the latter was willing to accede to his request for the normalization of relations with Israel, with which Syria has officially been at war since 1948.
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