Israeli military aircraft carried out a series of powerful airstrikes on military targets in the Syrian port city of Tartus, home to an important Russian naval base and ship repair facility, on the night of 15-16 December.

The images show new activity at the Hmeimim Air Base over the past few days as Russia's military footprint in Syria remains in limbo.

Russia has begun withdrawing a large amount of military equipment and troops from Syria following the ouster of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, according to two US officials and a western official familiar with the intelligence.

Israel said it had wiped out the vast majority of the Syrian military's assets, including huge chunks of its air-defense network.

Israel launched a series of airstrikes in Syria's coastal Tartus region late Sunday, marking the most intense bombardment in the area since 2012, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Russian troops were loading a truck at the entrance to the port they control in the Syrian city of Tartus on Monday, while Islamist fighters manned a nearby checkpoint.There Russian troops could be seen on Monday sand and rubble into a truck at their first checkpoint.

Russia's military presence at two key bases in Syria fell into uncertainty after the Assad regime fell last weekend.

The toppling of Bashar Assad has raised tentative hopes that Syrians might live peacefully and as equals after a half century of authoritarian rule.

The Russian military sites in Syria include a naval port on the Mediterranean Sea to berth submarines and an airfield to project power across the Middle East and Africa. But after rebels ousted Syria’s Kremlin-backed president, Bashar al-Assad, the future of these installations is uncertain.

Syria’s new transitional government says there is no place for Russian presence in Syria a week after the country’s long-time President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown. The new government also says it is open to engage in contacts with all countries to pave Syria’s new future.

Photographs taken during the rule of Syria's deposed president, Bashar al-Assad, show life inside Russia's air and naval facilities in the Middle Eastern country.

In the villages above the Syrian port city of Tartus they once hailed the sons who died fighting in Bashar al-Assad's service as martyrs.Down the hill in Tartus, a large port city on the Mediterranean that still holds a Russian naval garrison that once backed Assad,