The collapse of the Assad regime has prompted a punishing military response from Israel, which has launched airstrikes at military targets across Syria and deployed ground troops both into and beyond a demilitarized buffer zone for the first time in 50 years.

By The Associated Press Israel said Tuesday it had bombed more than 350 military sites in Syria during the previous 48 hours, targeting “most of the strategic weapons stockpiles” in

Israel has attacked Syrian military assets and has troops operating in the Golan buffer zone and slightly beyond.

Israeli ships destroyed the Syrian military fleet Monday night in a campaign to eliminate strategic threats, the defence minister said.

In his first address since the toppling of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei excoriated the United States and Israel.

Iran’s supreme leader claims the U.S. and Israel are behind the fall of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. NewsNation’s Leland Vittert says that claim isn't necessarily wrong as several U.S. politicians are on record as saying al-Assad “had to go.