US Bombs over 75 Targets in Syria after Assad Falls

SYRIA IN CONTEXT, 16 Dec 2024

Brett Wilkins | Common Dreams - TRANSCEND Media Service

F-15 fighters escort a U.S. B-52 bomber in this 31 Aug 2021 photo.
(Photo: Japan Air Self-Defense Force/U.S. Indo-Pacific Command/flickr/cc)

“The Western press are waxing lyrical about the new Syria being born—but not a word on the U.S. and Israeli bombs falling from the sky,” said Yanis Varoufakis.

9 Dec 2024 – U.S. military forces launched dozens of airstrikes on more than 75 Islamic State targets in Syria yesterday after the fall of longtime Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid ongoing Israeli and Turkish attacks on the war-torn Middle Eastern nation.

According to U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), warplanes including B-52 bombers, F-15 fighters, and A-10 ground attack aircraft “conducted dozens of precision airstrikes targeting known ISIS camps and operatives in central Syria.”

CENTCOM called the strikes “part of the ongoing mission to disrupt, degrade, and defeat ISIS in order to prevent the terrorist group from conducting external operations and to ensure that ISIS does not seek to take advantage of the current situation to reconstitute in central Syria.”

The U.S., “together with allies and partners in the region, will continue to carry out operations to degrade ISIS operational capabilities even during this dynamic period in Syria,” CENTCOM added.

“The Biden administration ordering ongoing airstrikes is a disappointing sign that they have no intent on reversing their deadly policy of interventionism.”

Responding Monday to the latest attacks on Syria by U.S. forces, Danaka Katovich, national co-director of the peace group CodePink, told Common Dreams: “We condemn the U.S. airstrikes in Syria. The U.S. has sowed chaos in Syria and the entire region for years and the Biden administration ordering ongoing airstrikes is a disappointing sign that they have no intent on reversing their deadly policy of interventionism.”

U.S. and coalition forces have killed and maimed at least tens of thousands of Syrians and Iraqis during the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations as part of the anti-ISIS campaign and wider so-called War on Terror.

Commenting on the dearth of coverage of the strikes by the corporate media, prominent Greek leftist Yanis Varoufakis said on social media that “the Western press are waxing lyrical about the new Syria being born—but not a word on the U.S. and Israeli bombs falling from the sky.”

“Is there no bottom to the moral void of the Western press?” he added.

Sunday’s U.S. strikes came as al-Assad and relatives fled to Russia—where they have been granted asylum—amid the fall of the capital, Damascus, to rebel forces.

Also on Sunday, Israeli forces seized more territory in Syria’s Golan Heights and ordered residents of five villages to “stay home and not go out until further notice” if they want to remain safe. Israel conquered the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights in 1967 and has unlawfully occupied it ever since. In 1981, Israel illegally annexed the occupied lands.

“We will not allow any hostile force to establish itself on our border,” right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza—said in a video posted on social media.

Numerous Israelis celebrated the seizure on social media, while others cautioned against boasting about what is almost certainly an illegal conquest.

Meanwhile in northern Syria, Turkish airstrikes in support of Syrian National Army rebels—who are battling U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters in and around the Kurdish-controlled city of Manbij—reportedly killed numerous civilians along with dozens of militants.

In what it called a “horrific massacre,” the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Monday that 11 civilians from the same family, including women and six children, were killed in a Turkish drone strike on the SDF-controlled village of Al-Mustariha in northern Raqqa Governate.

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Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.   Full Bio >

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