Israel launched artillery strikes on Syria yesterday morning, the Israeli army said, after several rockets were fired from there and landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
Israel’s retaliatory strike to rocket attacks from Syria — which no one has claimed — is the latest episode in escalating violence in the region.
“In response to the rockets fired from Syria at Israel earlier today, IDF Artillery is currently striking in Syrian territory,” the military wrote on Twitter, using the acronym for the Israeli Defense Forces.
Photo: AFP
A drone was also “currently striking the launchers in Syria from which rockets were launched into Israeli territory,” it said.
Six rockets were launched toward Israel on Saturday, with two landing in the Golan Heights, the military said.
At least one was intercepted by the Israeli air defense system.
The 1,200km2 region — patrolled by Israeli soldiers and bordering Lebanon — was seized from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israel later annexed it in a move that was never recognized by the international community.
Syrian Arab News Agency said the Israeli strikes took place at about 5am.
Citing an unnamed military source, it said that the Syrian military had “intercepted the rockets ... and brought down some of them.”
The surge in violence and unrest comes as the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, Jewish Passover and Christian Easter coincide.
Israeli police on Wednesday stormed the prayer hall of Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third-holiest site, in a raid aimed at dislodging “law-breaking youths masked agitators” they said had barricaded themselves inside.
The next day, more than 30 rockets were fired from Lebanese soil into Israel, which the Israeli military blamed on Palestinian groups, saying it was most likely Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip.
Israel then bombarded Gaza and southern Lebanon, targeting what it called “terror infrastructures” that belonged to Hamas.
It was the biggest salvo fired from Lebanon since Israel fought a devastating 34-day war with Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah in 2006 and the first time Israel has confirmed an attack on Lebanese territory since April last year.
Israel and Lebanon are technically in a state of war, and the ceasefire line is patrolled by the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, deployed in the country’s south.
On the Syrian side, Israel has recently intensified its raids targeting positions of pro-Iranian groups.
On Friday evening, an Italian tourist was killed and seven people were injured in a suspected car-ramming attack on pedestrians on the Tel Aviv seafront.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instructed to “mobilize all reserve border police units.”
Earlier on Friday, two British-Israeli sisters, aged 16 and 20, were killed and their mother seriously wounded when their vehicle was fired on in the Jordan Valley in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Police said four reserve battalions of border police were to be deployed in city centers from yesterday.
The Israeli Ministry of Defense on Saturday confirmed that it had mobilized soldiers to support police, and that it would tighten entry restrictions into Israel for Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza, in particular workers.
The current fever pitch follows violence on Wednesday, when Israeli police stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque in a pre-dawn raid.
Ramadan coincided with the Jewish Passover holiday this year, raising tensions with the tens of thousands of Palestinians who pray at Al-Aqsa during the Muslim fasting month.
The Palestinians fear Netanyahu’s hard-right government might change long-standing rules that allow Jews to visit, but not pray in the mosque compound, despite his repeated denials.
Since the beginning of January, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has claimed the lives of at least 92 Palestinians and 18 Israelis, official figures show.
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