Israel’s defence minister said the country wanted to create a “sterile defensive area” inside Syria after seizing territory and pounding military targets in the country following the collapse of President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

In recent days, Israeli ground forces have crossed the border from the occupied Golan Heights into a previously demilitarised buffer zone of more than 200 sq km inside Syria, seizing abandoned Syrian army positions.

Israel Katz said on Tuesday that he and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had ordered the military “to establish a sterile defensive area free of weapons and terror threats in southern Syria” without a permanent Israeli presence.

His comments came after Israel launched air strikes across Syria, with the Israeli military saying it had struck most of the “strategic weapons stockpiles” in the Arab state.

Over the past 48 hours, Israeli fighter jets carried out more than 350 aerial strikes, while war ships struck Syrian naval bases at Al-Bayda and Latakia ports.

Katz said that Israel had “destroyed” Syria’s modest navy “with great success”.

Israel’s strikes and incursions into Syria have been condemned internationally. Turkey’s foreign ministry said on Tuesday that “Israel is again displaying its occupier mentality”.

Geir Pedersen, UN envoy to Syria, warned that Israel risked damaging the chances of a peaceful transition in the fragile state.

“We need to see a stop to the Israeli attacks,” Pedersen said. “It’s extremely important that we don’t see any action from any international actor that destroys the possibility for this transformation in Syria to take place.”

On Tuesday, IDF spokesperson Avichay Adraee denied reports that the military had advanced towards the Syrian capital, Damascus, saying its troops “are present inside the buffer zone and at defensive points close to the border in order to protect the Israeli border”.

However, another Israeli military spokesperson acknowledged that while most of the ground force operations were inside the buffer zone, some troops had operated “beyond” the area.

Israel occupied most of the Golan Heights during the six-day war in 1967, but its claim over the land is not internationally recognised. Israeli ground troops last entered Syrian territory beyond the Golan Heights in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.

Israel has for more than a decade launched air strikes in Syria, targeting Iranian-affiliated weapons sites. Iran and the militant groups it supports, including the Lebanese movement Hizbollah, deployed in Syria to back the Assad regime during the country’s civil war.

Netanyahu said in a press conference on Monday night that “control on the Golan Heights ensures our security; it ensures our sovereignty”.

“The Golan Heights will be an inseparable part of the state of Israel forever,” he added.

Israeli officials said on Monday that air strikes had hit targets including remnants of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles.

A person familiar with developments in Syria said that Israel had also struck what was left of the Syrian air force, including grounded planes and helicopters.

The US, Israel’s biggest ally, backed its actions in Syria, describing the operations as “exigent operations to eliminate what they believe are limited threats”.

“We certainly recognise that they live in a tough neighbourhood and they have, as always, the right to defend themselves,” US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday.

The campaign came as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Islamist rebel faction that led the offensive that ousted Assad, seeks to consolidate control of Syria amid fears the change of regime could fuel regional instability.

Mohamed al-Bashir, head of the Syrian Salvation Government, HTS’s de facto civilian administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, announced he would be leading a temporary caretaker government for all of Syria that would “maybe” end on March 1 next year.

The toppling of the Assad regime, which ruled Syria for 50 years, capped a lightning offensive by HTS that swept across the country in under a fortnight.

As HTS took control of Damascus on Sunday, Assad escaped to Russia, the country that backed him in Syria’s 13-year civil war.

HTS leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani pledged in a statement published on rebel-run social media channels to hold to account “the criminals, murderers and army and security officers involved in torture of the Syrian people”.

HTS has issued a general amnesty for conscripted members of the Assad military, while state bodies have ordered a resumption of public services and activity in the economically vital oil sector.

Fighters and Syrian civilians have also opened the Assad regime’s notorious prisons, releasing captives including political prisoners who had been incarcerated for decades and uncovering evidence of torture.

Traffic began picking up on the streets of Damascus on Tuesday as residents tentatively began returning to a semblance of normal life, however. Some shops and restaurants reopened and government employees began going back to work.

Police from the Syrian Salvation Government were directing traffic in the city, while rebel fighters helped guard government ministries, some of which were ransacked and broken into during the rebel offensive. 

Additional reporting by Richard Salame in Beirut and Felicia Schwartz in Washington

Cartography by Steven Bernard

Luigi Mangione, the suspect charged in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was carrying a “ghost gun” at the time of his arrest, authorities said.

The 26-year-old was “in possession of a ghost gun that had the capability of firing a 9 millimeter round” when he was arrested in Altoona, Penn., on Monday, New York Police Department (NYPD) Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a press briefing.

The NYPD said the gun, which is “consistent with the weapon used in the murder,” may have been made on a 3D printer.

“I have no tolerance, nor should anyone, for one man using an illegal ghost gun to murder someone because he thinks his opinion matters most,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said on Monday.

Ghost guns, also known as privately made firearms, are assembled by their owners, either from scratch or through weapon parts kits. They are not marked with serial numbers, making them easy for criminals to acquire and difficult, if not impossible, for law enforcement to trace.

The Department of Justice Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said in 2022 that within the previous five years, it was only able to successfully trace 0.98% of suspected “ghost guns” back to their individual purchaser.

Over the last decade, a growing number of ghost guns have been recovered from crime scenes across the U.S., worrying many authorities. They have been used in homicides, domestic violence, robberies, killings of law enforcement officers, mass shootings and school shootings, including one that wounded two kindergarteners at a Northern California religious school last week.

The advocacy organization Everytown for Gun Safety has called them “the fastest growing gun safety problem in the country.”

While it is legal in the U.S. to build a firearm for personal use, the Biden administration, as well as more than a dozen states, have tried with varying degrees of success to regulate ghost guns.

Here’s what to know.

How are ghost guns made?

There are several main methods for assembling a ghost gun, a process that gun control advocates say can take less than an hour and costs only a few hundred dollars.

One is to use a 3D printer — with the instruction manuals and videos easily available online — to create some or most of the parts from scratch.

People can also buy the necessary components online, either piece by piece or all together in what are called buy-build-shoot kits.

‘Buy-build-shoot kits are weapon parts kits that are essentially pre-manufactured, [disassembled], complete firearms (a firearm in a box),” the U.S. Department of Justice says.

It was legal for retailers to sell those kits without running background checks until 2022, when the Justice Department passed a rule aimed at curbing the growing use of ghost guns in crimes.

How prevalent are ghost guns?

Ghost guns seized in federal law enforcement actions are displayed at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives field office in California in 2022.

Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images

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Ghost guns have been around in the U.S. at least since the 1990s, but have proliferated over the last decade or so.

The ATF says it received approximately 45,000 reports of suspected ghost guns recovered by law enforcement in criminal investigations between January 2016 and December 2021. Of those investigations, 692 involved homicides or attempted homicides.

Data from the bureau shows the number of suspected ghost guns rising steadily each year over that period, from 1,758 in 2016 to 19,344 in 2021.

State- and city-specific data also sheds light on the growing prevalence of ghost guns in recent years.

California data released in October shows that 8,340 ghost guns were recovered in the state in 2023, compared to just three in 2013.

Philadelphia police recovered 575 ghost guns in 2022, reporting a 311% increase in their use since 2019. The NYPD reported that officers seized 463 ghost guns in 2022, up from 263 the previous year.

“They are extremely dangerous and we must do more on the federal level to clamp down on the availability of ghost guns,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said at Monday’s briefing.

How are ghost guns regulated?

Private U.S. citizens are allowed to build guns for personal use under the Gun Control Act of 1968.

Even so, some state and federal authorities are taking steps to crack down on ghost guns.

Fifteen states have passed laws to regulate them, with many requiring serial numbers and background checks for component parts, and others — including New York — going a step further by requiring ghost guns to be reported to authorities.

In 2022, a Justice Department rule took effect that made weapons parts kits subject to the same regulations as traditional firearms, including requiring commercial sellers to become federally licensed, mark certain parts with serial numbers and run background checks on purchasers.

The rule also aims to regulate some of the ghost guns already in circulation, by requiring federally licensed dealers and gunsmiths to put serial numbers on any guns they take into inventory that don’t already have them, before selling them to another customer.

“If you commit a crime [with a] ghost gun, not only are state and local prosecutors going to come after you, but expect federal charges and federal prosecution as well,” President Biden said that year.

Kit manufacturers and sellers challenged the rule in court, arguing the ATF exceeded its authority. The U.S. Supreme Court allowed the rule to remain in place pending litigation and heard the case in October.

It has not yet made a decision, though NPR’s Nina Totenberg reported that the justices seemed inclined to side with the Biden administration.

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Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is in intensive care after brain surgery and is recovering “well”, the government announced on Tuesday.

The 79 year old, commonly referred to as Lula, underwent a craniotomy procedure to drain a haematoma on his head after an MRI scan showed an “intracranial haemorrhage”, according to a medical note shared by the government.

The injury related to a fall at home on October 19 and Lula had been suffering headaches, the note said.

The surgery was “uneventful”, the note added, and Lula was being monitored in intensive care at the Sírio-Libanês hospital in São Paulo. Doctors will hold a press conference at 9am local time on Tuesday. 

Lula cancelled his attendance at the Brics summit in Russia in October, citing health reasons. His surgery comes at a challenging moment for his presidency after he returned to power for a third term last year, with a pledge to lift welfare spending and expand the role of the state.

His administration has sought to reassure investors over his plans by promising to eliminate Brazil’s so-called primary budget deficit, which does not include debt interest payments. However, it has already watered down its own targets for achieving a surplus from next year onwards.

The Brazilian real hit an all-time low last month, falling below six to the US dollar, because of mounting concerns over the country’s public finances. On Tuesday it was flat in early trading at 6.08 per US dollar.