Overview
- On Tuesday, August 18, Israeli aircraft struck the Abu al‑Duhur airbase in Idlib province with multiple strikes that damaged the runway and storage facilities and caused no reported casualties.
- Israel later acknowledged the operation and said it aimed to stop a planned Turkish troop deployment at the site, a claim Ankara has rejected as baseless.
- U.S. Special Envoy Tom Barrack publicly identified the attack as Israeli, described it as an unnecessary escalation and warned it nearly triggered a direct military confrontation, urging renewed deconfliction channels.
- Damascus, Turkey and several regional states condemned the strike as a violation of Syrian sovereignty, and U.N. officials called for restraint to prevent further escalation.
- The attack highlights wider tensions over Turkey’s role in rebuilding Syria’s forces after Assad’s ouster and Israel’s long campaign to prevent Syrian rearmament, raising the risk of miscalculation near a strategically located base about 70 km from the Turkish border.