As per reports, the following are the updates pertaining to the escalations in Syria, as of Saturday (14 December);

• Israeli air strikes in Damascus on Friday (13 December) night reportedly targeted the headquarters of the Syrian Army’s fourth division and a radar battalion in the nearby countryside.
• Israeli military forces carried out patrols and raids inside Syrian territory near the Golan Heights region where they claim to have seized weapons including antitank missiles, bulletproof vests and ammunition.
• IDF stated that Israeli combat engineering troops, paratroopers, and the Egoz Unit, under the command of the IDF’s 474th Brigade, located weapons and ammunition while operating in the buffer zone in southwest Syria.
• The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has stated that strikes on Syrian chemical weapons sites risk contaminating and damaging valuable evidence of alleged chemical weapons.
• US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made an unannounced visit to Iraq on Friday (13 December) and met with its prime minister as the region grapples with implications of the Assad regime’s collapse.
• Reportedly, more than 2,000 Syrian army soldiers, who fled to Iraq over the weekend after the Syrian government’s collapse, are currently living in a tent city created by the Iraqi government to shelter them.
• Reportedly, a column of Russian military vehicles has been seen withdrawing from southern Syria towards the Tartous military base in the coastal city of Latakia on Friday (13 December).