Syrian rebels burn down tomb of Bashar al-Assad’s father

The tomb of ousted Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's father Hafez was torched in his hometown of Qardaha, AFP footage taken Wednesday showed, with rebel fighters in fatigues and young men watching it burn.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor told AFP the rebels had set fire to the mausoleum, located in the Latakia heartland of Assad's Alawite community.

AFP footage showed parts of the mausoleum ablaze and damaged, with the tomb of Hafez torched and destroyed.

The vast elevated structure atop a hill has an intricate architectural design with several arches, its exterior embellished with ornamentation etched in stone.

It also houses the tombs of other Assad family members, including Bashar's brother Bassel, who was being groomed to inherit power before he was killed in a road accident in 1994.

On Sunday, a lightning offensive by Islamist-led rebels seized key cities before reaching Damascus and forcing Assad to flee, ending more than 50 years of his family's rule.

Israel strikes military sites in Latakia, Tartus

A monitor of Syria's war on Wednesday said that Israeli air strikes targeted sites belonging to ousted president Bashar al-Assad's military in the coastal Latakia and Tartus provinces.

"Israeli warplanes launched air strikes" targeting "military sites" including "the Latakia port" as well as warehouses in neighbouring Tartus province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that "Israeli warplanes continue to destroy what remains of Syria's military arsenal for the fourth consecutive day since the fall of the former regime".

Israel strikes against international law: UN experts

Israel's strikes on Syria following the fall of longtime president Basher Al-Assad violate international law, United Nations experts said Wednesday, branding Israel's attempts to "preemptively disarm" its foes as "lawless".

Since Assad's ouster, Israel, which borders Syria, has sent troops into a buffer zone on the east of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights, in a move the UN has said violates a 1974 armistice.

And Israel's military said it had conducted hundreds of strikes against Syrian military assets in the past two days, claiming to target everything from chemical weapons stores to air defences to keep them out of rebel hands.

"There is absolutely no basis under international law to  preventively or preemptively disarm a country you don't like," said Ben Saul, UN special rapporteur on the promotion of human rights while countering terrorism.

"If that were the case, it would be a recipe for global chaos," he told reporters in Geneva, pointing out that "lots of countries have adversaries they would like to see without weapons".

"This is completely lawless."

Saul, who like other special rapporteurs is an independent expert who does not speak on behalf of the United Nations, said Israel's strikes on neighbouring Lebanon were different, "because there is a hot conflict there".

Israel stepped up its campaign in south Lebanon in late September after nearly a year of cross-border exchanges begun by Hezbollah in support of Hamas following its Palestinian ally's October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel.

While Assad was propped up by Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, along with Russia and Iran, Saul decried that the current strikes were "a continuation of what Israel has been doing in Syria for at least a decade".

He pointed to "many, many hundreds of preventative attacks" launched by Israeli forces into Syria over the years against Hezbollah weapons dumps and storage facilities, despite the fact that the Lebanon-based militants were not attacking Israel from Syria.

"That would be the only circumstance in which it could use self defence against Hezbollah in Syria," Saul said.

"But you can't just follow your enemy wherever they are in the world, and bomb them in some third country, which has been Israel's approach."

George Katrougalos, the UN special rapporteur on the promotion of democratic and equitable international order, meanwhile described Israel's actions in Syria as "part of a pattern".

"It is another case of the lawlessness that Israel demonstrates in the area: attacks without provocation against a sovereign state."