Israel threatens to retaliate against Syria after missile attack

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Israel has threatened to retaliate against the new government in Damascus after missiles were launched towards Israel from Syria for the first time since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime last year.

It was not immediately clear what group was responsible for firing the two missiles on Tuesday, which the Israeli military said landed in open areas in the occupied Golan Heights. No injuries were reported in the immediate aftermath.

In response to the launches, the Israeli military said it had shelled sites in southern Syria, and defence minister Israel Katz said Israel would hold the new government of Ahmed al-Sharaa “directly responsible for any threat and fire towards the State of Israel”.

“A full response will come soon,” Katz said late on Tuesday. “We will not allow a return to the reality of October 7,” referring to the Hamas-led attack on Israel in 2023.

The Israel Defense Forces later said it had struck weapons belonging to the Syrian military in southern Syria.

The first round of Israeli fire had struck southern Deraa province, according to Syrian state media.

The cross-border exchange came after Israel and Syria — which have never had diplomatic relations — held several rounds of direct talks in recent weeks aiming to quell spiralling tensions between them.

The talks followed a spate of Israeli air strikes across Syria, including one that struck near the presidential palace on the outskirts of Damascus last month in what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said was “a message” to al-Sharaa after a wave of sectarian violence against the Druze population.

That strike — which the Syrian presidency denounced as a “dangerous escalation against state institutions and sovereignty” — was one of a number of aggressive military steps Israel has taken in Syria since Assad was ousted in December.

In the months since, Israel has unilaterally and “indefinitely” seized a five-decade old buffer zone in Syria, bombed what it says are military targets inside Syria and encroached on towns and villages in Quneitra province, far beyond the territory Israel has occupied since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Israeli officials have also decried Syria’s new leaders as a “terrorist regime of radical Islam” and threatened a broader offensive should the government harm the Druze.

Sharaa’s young administration has neither threatened nor taken provocative action against Israel. The new leaders have consistently sought to engage the west and regional powers, saying they are focused not on new conflict but rebuilding and unifying the country after more than 13 years of civil war.

The government is working to gain full control over the fragmented country, which is awash with weapons and multiple armed factions, not all of which are loyal to Sharaa.