DAMASCUS (Dispatches) -- Bombing raids have hit sites across Syria as regional actors in the Middle East scrambled to maintain their footholds in Syria after the sudden fall of the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad, who fled to Moscow on Sunday.
The U.S. has struck targets threatening its Kurdish proxies in central Syria, while Turkey has attacked them.
The occupying regime of Israel also confirmed that it had sent forces into the buffer zone beyond the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and into former Syrian military positions on Mount Hermon in what it described as a “temporary measure”. It said it would continue with airstrikes on sites allegedly associated with missiles and chemical weapons.
The UN Security Council was due to meet later on Monday to discuss the Syrian crisis in a closed session and at Russia’s request. The strikes reflect the perilous path forward for Syria.
With sharply competing agendas, Turkey and the Zionist regime have already laid out what they say are their red lines regarding Syria, with Turkey saying it would not accept the Kurdish PKK benefiting from the new situation, even as it promised to help Syrian migrants in Turkey, which hosts some 3 million refugees, to return.
Turkey’s foreign minister and the UN secretary general, Antonio Guterres, also discussed the transition on Monday, a Turkish foreign ministry source said, as hundreds of Syrian refugees had gathered at two border crossings in southern Turkey hoping to return home.
Justifying Israel’s latest strikes on Syria, Gideon Saar, the Zionist regime’s foreign minister, said it struck what he described as suspected chemical weapons sites and long-range rockets in Syria in order to prevent them from falling into the hands of hostile actors.
Israeli war minister Israel Katz said the military would “destroy heavy strategic weapons throughout Syria, including surface-to-air missiles, air defense systems, surface-to-surface missiles, cruise missiles, long-range rockets, and coastal missiles.”
Israel launched attacks on the province of Dera’a, targeting military facilities and equipment near the city of Azra. The attack caused explosions at ammunition depots. The city of Dera’a was hit as well.
Zionist troops were heading towards areas in Dara’a, located about 90 kilometers south of the capital Damascus, reports said.
Earlier, Israeli tanks and armored vehicles crossed into the so-called buffer zone, separating the occupied Golan Heights from Syria. 
Zionist forces earlier launched a foray into Syrian soil and entered the southwestern city of Quneitra near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights after militant groups took control of the Arab country. 
The regime’s media also reported the entry of Israeli tanks into Khan Arnabeh, which is to the northeast of Quneitra and five kilometers from the border of occupied Golan.
Israel has been occupying Syrian territory for 57 years after it captured the Golan Heights following the 1967 six-day war.
The occupation forces were reported to be digging a large trench on the Syrian border.
Egypt’s foreign ministry condemned Israel’s incursion into the buffer zone with Syria, describing it as an effort to “force a new reality on the ground”.
The ministry stated that Egypt views this as an extension of Israel’s “further occupation of Syrian lands.
And in its own warning, the Russian news agency Interfax, citing a lawmaker, said Moscow would respond harshly to any attack on its military bases in Syria.