Anti-Assad rebels said to seize 95% of Syrian Golan Heights
Damascus tells Israel that troops who fired missile across the border on Sunday, killing Israeli boy, mistook Israeli truck for rebel vehicle
June 28, 2014, 2:29 am
Smoke
rises from a fire as a result of fighting in the the Syrian village of
Quneitra near the border with Israel, as seen from an observatory near
the Quneitra crossing, Thursday, June 6, 2013 (photo credit:
AP/Sebastian Scheiner)
Almost the entire Syrian side of
the Golan Heights is now under the control of rebel forces, including
radical Islamist groups, a senior Israeli military commander in the area
said Friday.
Only
the Quneitra border area is still in the hands of forces loyal to
President Bashar Assad, Lt.-Col. Anan Abbas, deputy commander of the
Golan Brigade, told Israel’s Channel 10. About 95 percent of the Syrian
side of the Golan is in the hands of anti-Assad rebels, including
radical Islamic groups such as the Al-Nusra Front, affiliated with
al-Qaeda, a rival of the burgeoning Islamic State of Iraq and the
Levant, better known as ISIL or ISIS.
One of two Syrian army brigades that used to control the area has completely disappeared, the officer said.
At present, the Islamist groups in the area
are focused on the war against Assad, he said, “but we know their goal
is to harm Israel; we’ve seen their propaganda material.”
The Israeli officer said that the dramatic gains made by the rebel forces in the area appeared to explain why Syrian troops fired a missile on Sunday that killed a 15-year-old boy on the Israeli side of the border.
Apparently forces loyal to Assad, stationed
some five kilometers inside Syrian territory, erroneously calculated
that a civilian truck, delivering water to Israeli contractors who were
working on the border fence, was actually a rebel truck on the Syrian
side of the border, and opened fire on it with an anti-tank missile. The
attack killed 15-year-old Mohammad Karkara, who had accompanied his
father, a civilian contractor, to work that day.
In response to the attack, Israel that night
launched a series of retaliatory air strikes that killed a reported 10
Syrian soldiers, though Damascus put the number at four.
Subsequently, the TV report said, Syria
conveyed the message to Israel, via UN liaison personnel stationed on
the Golan, that the anti-tank missile was fired in error. Israel “is
inclined to accept the explanation,” the report said.
The Golan Heights is a strategic plateau on
the Israeli-Syrian border. Israel captured the territory in the 1967
war, having been attacked from the Golan over the previous 20 years, and
extended Israeli law to the area in 1981. Unsuccessful peace efforts
over the years have seen Israel ready to trade most of the Golan for a
permanent accord with Damascus, but the notion of Israeli-Syrian peace
has all but disappeared as Syria collapsed into anarchy over the past
three years of civil war
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