Violence in Syria's Druze province has triggered Israeli military action, complicating relations with Turkey and creating a power vacuum that Iran could exploit.

People in Deir al-Balah are told to leave, as the IDF prepares to launch its first ground offensive in the city during its war against Hamas.

Israel learned from the 2024 attacks. During the 12-day war in June, Israel focused on taking out Iranian missile launchers, and it appears many of them were destroyed in the war.

The Israel Defense Forces on Wednesday attacked the entrance to the Syrian regime’s military headquarters in the Damascus area in response to reports of atrocities against local Druze residents.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the Damascus headquarters served as a command center for deploying regime forces to Suwayda, a southern Syrian region gripped by days of deadly clashes between government troops, Druze militias, and Bedouin groups.

Israel has threatened to increase its involvement in Syria and vowed to protect the Druze religious minority, which began as a 10th-century offshoot of Ismailism, a branch of Shiite Islam, the Associated Press reported. Most of the world’s Druze population lives in Syria, with the rest predominantly in Israel and Lebanon.

The Israel Defense Forces said it struck "the entrance" of Syria's military headquarters in Damascus on Wednesday.

The expansion of the 21-month-long offensive into the densely populated area comes as Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe, with the UN warning that Israel’s assault on the territory and restriction of aid deliveries had left its entire 2.1mn population at risk of famine.

Israel launched rare airstrikes deep into Damascus on Wednesday, targeting Syria’s military headquarters and a site near the presidential palace. Israeli officials said the strikes were aimed at protecting Syria's Druze minority amid escalating violence in southern Syria.

Israel can’t intervene in every conflict around the world. But this felt different — it was a moral and familial obligation,’ says one Rabbi with a

They were driven by something else: a sense of responsibility toward the Druze community in Syria.Past strikes typically followed a narrow script: preventing weapons transfers, blocking entrenchment near the border,