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Israel claims destroying Syrian army post in occupied Golan Heights

An Israeli military armored personnel carrier (APC) maneuvers in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights near the Syrian frontier. (Photo by Reuters)

The Israeli military says it has blown up a Syrian army post in the Golan Heights, using ground forces to detonate the site instead of targeting it from the air in order to send a message to Syria and Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah.

The army “destroyed a forward observation post of the Syrian army that was set up in an Israeli area west of the Alfa line in the Golan Heights,” Israeli army spokesman Avichay Adraee wrote on Twitter on Tuesday evening.

He also published the purported footage of the attack.

Back in 1967, Israel captured large swathes of Syria’s Golan Heights during the Six-Day War. The territory has been occupied by the regime since then.

In 1981, Israel unilaterally annexed the Golan, in a move not recognized by the international community. However, the US recognized Israeli “sovereignty” over the occupied Golan Heights in 2019.

Adraee said it was the third time in the last year that Israel had conducted such an operation.

Since the beginning of the Syrian conflict in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes on Syrian soil, violating the Arab country’s sovereignty throughout the conflict by attacking positions of the Syrian government, which has been fighting terrorist groups such as Daesh throughout the 10-year war.

Early last month, the Israeli military carried out an airstrike against a residential area in Syria’s southwestern province of Quneitra, marking the second such attack in less than a week.

The United States has also carried out its fair share of illegal attacks against Syria, under both Democratic and Republican leadership. In February, US President Joe Biden marked his first military strike on another country’s soil with an attack targeting a border point in Syria’s eastern Dayr al-Zawr Province, only a month after he assumed office.

Eight killed in protests by US-backed militants

On Tuesday, at least eight people were killed and dozens injured when US-backed Kurdish militants fired live rounds to disperse Arab tribal protests against their rule in the Syrian city of Manbij.

The attack came after hundreds of demonstrators marched near checkpoints around the city a day after a civilian was killed in protests against the Kurdish minority rule over a mainly Arab tribal population, Reuters reported. 

The unrest was the bloodiest in the city since it was captured five years ago by the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a US-backed militant group spearheaded by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG).

Some 30 kilometers from the Turkish border, Manbij occupies a critical spot in the map of the Syrian conflict, near the junction of three separate blocks of territory that form some spheres of Syrian, Turkish and US influence.

Residents and tribal elders said resentment against the SDF rule has grown in north and eastern Syria among the majority Arab population, with many objecting to compulsory conscription of young men and discrimination in top leadership layers.

They said the fate of thousands of inmates has also been a major issue in the dispute.


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