Israel carries out hundreds of airstrikes across Syria
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 10 December 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Israel Defense Forces confirmed it has troops operating in Syrian territory beyond the demilitarized buffer zone between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. It added that its strikes were to prevent weapons falling "into the hands of extremists" as Syria transitions to a post-Assad era. We hear from Damascus and ask how Syria’s new rulers are likely to govern?
Also on the programme: Investigators continue to interrogate Luigi Mangione, the suspect in New York's health insurance boss killing; and Google's new quantum computer chip is hailed as breakthrough technology, but what can it actually do?
(Photo: Abu Mussab al-Halabi, a rebel fighter poses for a photograph after an interview in Presidential Palace, Damascus Credit: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to NewsHour on the BBC World Service. I'm Celia Hatton, coming to you live from our studio in London. |
| 0:10.9 | We'll start this edition with a deeper look at what's going on in Syria. The sudden collapse of Bashar al-Assad's regime there has been compared to the Middle East equivalent |
| 0:21.3 | of the fall of the Berlin Wall. In Damascus, Syria's new government is already starting to take |
| 0:28.2 | shape. The rebel leader Abu Mohammed al-Julani has appointed the man who's been running most of |
| 0:34.2 | the rebel-held Idlib province as the countries in Trim Prime Minister. |
| 0:39.3 | And the new authorities in Damascus have announced that senior officials of the deposed Assad regime |
| 0:44.5 | who tortured political prisoners will be brought to justice. Robert Ford is an former |
| 0:49.9 | American ambassador to Syria. He told the BBC the new leadership of Syria was facing challenges. |
| 0:56.7 | I'm hopeful that the Syrians will be able to put together some kind of coalition. |
| 1:03.9 | They don't have much experience with real politics, making concessions, doing trades, mutual benefit type of calculations. |
| 1:14.7 | So it's going to be a steep uphill learning curve for them. |
| 1:19.6 | But I would like to be hopeful at this early stage that they can avoid a Libya scenario. |
| 1:25.8 | But while the leadership appears to be falling into place, |
| 1:29.7 | Hayat Hadir al-Sham, or HTS, has yet to assert control over all Syrian territory. |
| 1:36.9 | And Israel appears to be taking advantage of that vacuum. |
| 1:39.9 | It's carried out hundreds of airstrikes on targets across Syria, including the capital, Damascus. |
| 1:46.2 | Lena Sinjab joins us live from Damascus now. |
| 1:50.0 | Lena, are we getting a clear idea of what a future Syrian government might look like? |
| 1:56.6 | Well, for the moment, the leader of the HTS, Mohamed al-Zolani, appointed an interim government. |
| 2:03.9 | And this interim government with a small cabinet basically is to start handing over and taking over the duties from the former government. |
| 2:14.4 | He basically said, we need to get the services running for people, for the |
| 2:20.2 | country to start re-operating. But, you know, people watching the disappointment, he basically |
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