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 leaders, in a further sign of western engagement after the fall of 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.