A car bomb killed at least 15 people in the Syrian city of Manbij on Monday, the second attack there in three days and Syria’s deadliest since Bashar al-Assad was toppled from power in December.
There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the attack in Manbij, located some 30 km. from the Turkish border. The Civil Defense rescue service identified the dead as 14 women and one man and said another 15 women were wounded.
The victims were agricultural workers, and the death toll was likely to increase, a civil defense official told Reuters.
Manbij has changed hands numerous times during the Syrian war, most recently in December when Turkish-backed groups captured it from the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which is led by the Kurdish YPG militia.
The SDF had captured Manbij from the Islamic State in 2016.
On Saturday, a car bomb in the city killed four civilians and wounded nine others, including children, Syrian state news agency SANA reported.
Assad was toppled from power on December 8, following a lightning offensive by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, whose leader, Abu Mohammed al-Shaara, was declared Syria’s transitional president last week.
Israel is watching such events warily, concerned that some of this violence will eventually spill over into the Golan Heights.
For this reason, Israel seized a buffer security zone in Syria on December 8 and has said it will hold on to this area until it feels its security concerns with the new regime have been addressed.
The Western pressure on Israel to withdraw has been light, but it could increase in the coming months as the new regime increasingly reintegrates with the West.
IDF troops operate in southern Lebanon
In neighboring Lebanon, IDF soldiers from the 7th and 769th Brigades located weapons storage facilities containing mortar shells, missiles, rockets, explosives, firearms, and a large amount of military equipment belonging to Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, according to the military.
All of the weaponry was confiscated, and the storage facilities were dismantled. The IDF added that in recent days, troops “conducted scans to remove threats in the area and dismantle Hezbollah terrorist infrastructure.”
The military also killed several Hezbollah terrorists in the area and arrested others. It was unclear whether the Hezbollah fighters had confronted IDF forces directly, or more likely were caught trying to move weapons around.
The IDF is “committed to continue operating in accordance with the understandings between Israel and Lebanon,” it said.
The military has consistently announced findings by troops of Hezbollah weapons – weapons that it confiscates – to highlight Israel’s position of the need to remain in southern Lebanon at least until February 18, if not longer, per the terms of the ceasefire deal. Initially, the IDF was due to withdraw on January 26, but it received an extension in a US-Lebanese government deal.
West Bank operation continues
In the West Bank, an IDF operation in the northern part of the territory, which began on January 21, continued on Monday in Jenin, Tulkarm, and several other villages. The army said that 23 structures were dismantled, after explosives laboratories, weapons, and observation posts were uncovered. The Palestinian state news agency said that about 20 buildings were leveled, according to Reuters.
For the first time, troops are conducting operations in the West Bank – via transport by partially armored vehicles. The Eitan vehicles are still not as well armored as the seemingly nearly unstoppable Namer vehicles – which sometimes got hit by five to seven rockets and kept moving – but are much better protected than the vehicles the IDF has used in the West Bank to date.
The Bislach Unit specifically moved into northern Samaria villages using Eitan vehicles. The use of Eitans is only a partial paradigm shift as other vehicles will still be used, but they will be employed for rescue operations and other complex tasks.
Using the Eitan vehicles is a force multiplier for the IDF and provides another manifestation of the power that the military says it is unleashing in the northern West Bank.