Construction and Housing Minister Yoav Galant (Kulanu) said on Tuesday that the time had come to assassinate Syrian President Bashar Assad. Galant, who was speaking at a conference on ground fighting, said that Assad was a despicable murderer who was perpetrating genocide.

"Lowlife murderers and leaders who call for the destruction of Israel, such as Assad and his operators in Tehran, no longer have any right to exist," said Galant. "When we finish with the serpent's tail we will also reach its head which is in Tehran."

"The reality whereby Syria executes people, intentionally uses chemical weapons to hurt them and now, in the most recent move of extremism, is burning their bodies – this has not been seen in the world in 70 years," said the minister, who frequently speaks out on political matters.

"We are crossing a red line, and in my view the time has come to assassinate Assad. And when we finish with the tail of the serpent, we will reach the head of the serpent which can be found in Tehran, and we will deal with it, too.

"The State of Israel knows how to defend itself on its own, but we must always remember that we have friends and allies and it is important to nurture our relationships with them," said Galant.

On Monday, the U.S. State Department announced that Assad had set up a crematorium next to Saydnaya Military Prison, where thousands have been executed since the start of the war.

According to Stuart Jones, acting assistant secretary for the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the State Department, the crematorium could enable the regime to dispense of the bodies of prisoners in the jail, located near Damascus.

"Credible sources have believed that many of the bodies have been disposed in mass graves," Jones told reporters.

"We now believe that the Syrian regime has installed a crematorium in the Sednaya prison complex which could dispose of detainees' remains with little evidence," he added.

Jones also said that the United States thinks that the crematorium will serve to hide evidence of mass murder in the prison and that Washington will present evidence of the crematorium's existence to the international community.