The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, reported early Monday that Israeli airstrikes pounded missile warehouses and other former Syrian army sites along Syria’s coast in the “most violent strikes in the Syrian coast region since the beginning of the (Israeli) strikes in 2012.”

The Israeli military declined to comment on the strikes.

Germany's foreign minister is warning anyone involved in atrocities for the ousted Syrian government against seeking refuge in her country, saying they would face "the full force of the law."

Germany has been a major destination for Syrian refugees over the past decade, and several hundred thousand Syrian nationals live there. In rulings since 2021, former Syrian secret police officers already have been convicted in Germany for overseeing or facilitating the abuse of detainees.

American officials have been in direct contact with the terrorist-designated rebel group that led the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Saturday.

Blinken, speaking at a news conference in Jordan, was the first U.S. official to publicly confirm contacts between the Biden administration and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, which led a coalition of armed opposition groups that drove Assad from power and into asylum in Russia last weekend.

At Damascus' international airport, the new head of security — one of the rebels who marched across Syria to the capital — arrived with his team. The few maintenance workers who showed up for work huddled around Maj Hamza al-Ahmed, eager to learn what will happen next.

They quickly unloaded all the complaints they had been too afraid to express during the rule of President Bashar Assad, which now, inconceivably, is over.

The United Nations special envoy for Syria on Sunday called for a quick end to Western sanctions after the ouster of President Bashar Assad.

The Syrian government has been under strict sanctions by the United States, European Union and others for years as a result of Assad's brutal response to what began as peaceful anti-government protests in 2011 and later spiraled into a civil war.

Caretaker Prime Minister Najib Mikati has called for Syrians who sought refuge in his country to return home following the fall of Syria's longtime leader, Bashar al-Assad.

"The consequences of the Syrian war made Lebanon home to the largest number of refugees per capita, with one-third of our population comprising of Syrian refugees", Mikati said Saturday at a Rome political festival.

Israel has launched more than 60 strikes on Syrian territory over the past few hours, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said late Saturday.

Israel fired 61 missiles at Syrian military sites in less than five hours Saturday evening, it reported, maintaining a campaign which started after rebel forces toppled president Bashar al-Assad nearly a week ago.

The Yarmouk refugee camp outside Damascus was considered the capital of the Palestinian diaspora before the war in Syria reduced it to row after row of blasted out buildings where there were once falafel stands, pharmacies and mosques.

Taken over by a series of militant groups then bombarded by government planes, the camp has been all but abandoned since 2018. The buildings that were not destroyed by bombs were demolished by the government or stripped by thieves. Those who wanted to return to rebuild their homes were stymied by Kafkaesque bureaucratic and security requirements.

The leader of the Islamist-led rebels who seized power in Damascus criticized Israel on Saturday for its incursion into southern Syria this week but said his country is too exhausted for a conflict with Israel.

Ahmad al-Sharaa in his first public comments on Israel in the week since Assad's fall said “the pretexts that Israel uses have ended" for its airstrikes inside Syria in recent days.

Arab, Western and Turkish diplomats agreed in talks in Jordan Saturday on the need for an "inclusive" government in Syria following the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

Blinken told reporters that the talks would issue a joint statement in which "we agreed that the transition process should be Syrian-led and Syrian-owned and produce an inclusive and representative government".