Israel says kills five militants in Syrian Golan strike
An Israeli air strike on the Syrian Golan Heights killed at least four Palestinian militants responsible for Thursday’s rocket fire on an Israeli village, an Israeli defense official said on Friday.
But Israel said the rockets had been launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group inside Syria and initially responded with a wave of overnight strikes against Syrian army posts along the Golan Heights on the Syria-Israel border.
“The countries that are rushing to embrace Iran should know that it was an Iranian commander who directed and supported the cell that fired at Israel”, the prime minister’s office said. According to a report by the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights, two Hezbollah members and three Druze people were killed in the attack. “Islamic Jihad has no armed presence outside of Palestine”, Dawoud Shehab, a group spokesman, told Reuters news agency.
In a similar act of violence before midnight Thursday, at least five civilians were killed when Israel carried out an airstrike on an area in Syria’s Quneitra close to the Israeli-occupied side of Golan Heights.
Israel had warned the government in war-wracked Syria that it would “suffer the consequences” after Thursday’s rocket attacks, which it said had been masterminded by a senior Iranian official.
But Islamic Jihad said those killed were not among its own.
The Israel attack also targeted a Syrian army regiment near the capital Damascus.
The Syrian army and government have always accused Israel of working to help the radical groups in southern Syria to create a buffer zone that could protect Israeli-held territories from the spillover of the Syrian crisis.
Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon stated in a press conference that this was a deliberate attack and a “coming attraction” for future Iranian backed aggression. “We have no intention of ratcheting up this confrontation, but our policy [of retaliating for attacks against Israeli civilians] remains as it was”, he said.
Separately, the Israeli army said its air and artillery strikes hit 14 Syrian military sites on the Syrian Golan.
The Israeli regime claimed it had “credible information” that Iran, a key backer of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, was behind Thursday’s rocket attack.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was deeply concerned over the serious violations of the Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Israel and Syria and urged them to de-escalate the situation, said a statement issued by the secretary-general’s spokesperson Friday.