U.N.'s forces face off with rebels from Syria

After fight, Filipinos escape to safety

Philippines military chief Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang Jr. (seated left) holds an online videoconference Saturday with a commander of Philippine troops at one of the encampments in the Golan Heights. The troops came under attack by Syrian rebels early Saturday, the U.N. said, adding that all 35 of the Philippine peacekeepers at the Breiqa encampment were accounted for and safe.
Philippines military chief Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang Jr. (seated left) holds an online videoconference Saturday with a commander of Philippine troops at one of the encampments in the Golan Heights. The troops came under attack by Syrian rebels early Saturday, the U.N. said, adding that all 35 of the Philippine peacekeepers at the Breiqa encampment were accounted for and safe.

BEIRUT -- Clashes broke out Saturday between al-Qaida-linked Syrian rebels and United Nations peacekeepers in the Golan Heights after the militants surrounded the U.N. encampment, activists and officials said, as the international organization risked being sucked further into the conflict.

The area took fire from mortars and machine guns, the U.N. said. The peacekeepers inside returned fire and kept the attackers from entering.

A group of Filipino soldiers at the Breiqa encampment exchanged gunfire with Syrian gunmen after coming under attack in the morning, Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said in a text message Saturday.

Reinforcements reached that base, and all of the 35 soldiers there escaped to safety, with the assistance of Irish peacekeepers who rushed to the scene, said a military official who spoke on condition that his name and country of origin not be revealed, citing policy.

He said there was no shooting involved, and no injuries. He said the Irish battalion also evacuated another base on Friday but provided no further details.

Gazmin confirmed that those peacekeepers were "extricated." The Philippine military said there were 35 Filipino troops in the Breiqa encampment.

Another gunbattle began early Saturday at the Rwihana base some 1.5 miles from Quneitra, where 40 Filipino peacekeepers were surrounded by Nusra fighters who were ordering them to surrender, said Rami Abdurrahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang, the Philippine military chief, said early today that all the Filipino peacekeepers at both bases had escaped.

The military chief said that the peacekeepers separately moved to positions that were safely away from any further threat.

Abdurrahman, whose information comes from a network of activists throughout Syria, said he was not aware of any fatalities among the 40 Filipino peacekeepers in the Rwihana encampment as sporadic fighting continued throughout the day. A Philippine military spokesman, Lt. Col. Ramon Zagala, also said that there were no casualties.

Earlier this month, the Philippine Defense Ministry had said that 331 of its troops in Golan Heights would be sent home at the end of their tour of duty in October.

The clashes came after Syrian rebel groups, including the Nusra Front, overran the Quneitra crossing Wednesday -- on the frontier between Syrian- and Israeli-controlled parts of the Golan Heights -- seizing 44 Fijian U.N. peacekeepers.

The SITE Intelligence Group reported that the Nusra Front had posted a statement on its Twitter account Saturday taking responsibility for detaining the Fijian peacekeepers. The Nusra Front stated that the Fijian detainees "are in a safe place, and they are in good health, and that we have given them what they need of food and treatment."

The U.N. mission, known as UNDOF, has 1,223 troops from six countries: Fiji, India, Ireland, Nepal, the Netherlands and the Philippines.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemned Saturday's attack on U.N. peacekeepers' positions in the Golan Heights, in a statement released by his spokesman.

"The Secretary General demands the unconditional and immediate release of all the detained United Nations peacekeepers and calls upon all parties to cooperate fully with UNDOF to enable it to operate freely and to ensure full safety and security of its personnel and assets," the statement said.

An Israeli military spokesman confirmed that a number of U.N. peacekeepers entered Israel. He spoke on condition of anonymity citing military guidelines.

The Nusra Front recently has seized hostages to exchange for prisoners detained in Syria and Lebanon.

The situation of the peacekeepers remains "very, very fluid," the U.N. secretary-general's spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said Friday at U.N. headquarters in New York.

Fighting between rebels and the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad has rattled the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Golan Heights. The U.N. has monitored the buffer zone between Syria and Israel since 1974, a job that for decades involved almost no violence. That has changed since the start of the Syrian civil war, which has killed more than 190,000 people.

Still, most of the mission's observation posts along the frontier are functioning. Peacekeepers were captured by rebels earlier in the conflict but released unharmed.

It is unclear why the rebels seized the peacekeepers, although some have speculated that they are using them as human shields to deter Syrian government forces from attacking the area.

Also Saturday, a Syrian activist released a video showing extremists from the Islamic State group opening fire and killing dozens of men stripped down to their underwear.

The men in the video were likely those who were captured after the extremists overran a Syrian airfield last Sunday, Syrian soldiers who were stuck behind front lines after the northeastern Tabqa air base fell to the Islamic State group.

The video, released by an activist who uses the name Abu Ibrahim Raqqawi, corresponded with reporting of the event. It matched other videos that were released since Wednesday. One video showed the men being held in a room with a concrete floor; another showed the men forced to march through a barren landscape in their underwear, herded like sheep. Another showed their seemingly lifeless bodies in piles on the ground.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said earlier that about 120 captive government troops from Tabqa were killed near the base.

There was no immediate comment from the Syrian government.

The Islamic State group uses violence and images of violence, from mass killings to beheadings, to instill fear in its opponents and win recruits as it seeks to expand a proto-state it has carved out in Syria and Iraq.

Information for this article was contributed by Diaa Hadid, Oliver Teves, Shawn Pogatchnik and Peter Enav of The Associated Press; by Clarissa Batino and Ahmed A. Namatalla of Bloomberg News; and by Ben Hubbard, Jodi Rudoren and Somini Sengupta of The New York Times.

A Section on 08/31/2014

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