BEIRUT - Israeli troops opened fire Wednesday on two suspected militants who were trying to plant explosives on the Jewish state’s frontier with Syria, the Israeli military said. Syrian state media accused Israel of targeting its forces with tank shells and warned against such “adventures.”
In eastern Lebanon, Syrian airstrikes targeted the outskirts of a Lebanese border town, officials said. The violence along both frontiers shows how Syria’s three-year civil war is spilling over into its neighbors, destabilizing the wider region.
Israel’s military said its forces fired on what it called Hezbollah-affiliated militants on the Golan Heights and that “hits were identified.” The military did not explain how it knew of the men’s purported links with Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shiite group that is a sworn enemy of Israel.
Hezbollah officials were not immediately available for comment.
Syria’s state news agency SANA, citing a military source, said Israeli forces fired four tank shells toward the Golan village of Hamidiyeh, hitting a school and a mosque early Wednesday. It said Israeli forces also fired another four shells toward another area called Houriyeh, and then opened fire a third time, again toward Hamidiyeh.
It said the attacks wounded seven members of the security forces and four civilians. It provided no further information.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said the Israeli “aggression” against Hamidiyeh came because it “felt” the Syrian military had carried out a pre-emptive operation to secure its border with Israel.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported that Israeli forces fired several tank shells and two missiles toward the Golan Heights. The group said one missile hit a school in Hamidiyeh, where Syrian troops were concentrated. The group obtains its news from a network of activists in Syria.
During Syria’s civil war, mortar rounds and artillery shells - apparently overshooting their targets inside Syria - have landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, prompting an Israeli response on several occasions.
Israeli military spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner described Wednesday’s shooting a response to a “substantially different threat” than what Israel has seen before: an attempt to plant a bomb directly on the border. That warranted a “more forceful response,” Lerner said,adding that the military fired multiple artillery rounds, and that the two suspected militants were the only targets.
Syria’s state news agency described Wednesday’s shooting as “aggressive acts” and warned Israel against such “adventures” and “testing our fighting capabilities.”
Israel and Hezbollah battled to a stalemate during a month long war in the summer of 2006. Tensions between the two foes spiked last week when Israeli aircraft struck Hezbollah positions inside Lebanon.
For the past year, Hezbollah has been deeply embroiled in Syria’s conflict, openly dispatching its fighters to battle alongside forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad. Israel said Hezbollah has used the fighting in Syria as a cover to transfer weapons to Lebanon.
Israeli leaders have repeatedly vowed to prevent Hezbollah from obtaining sophisticated arms that could threaten the Jewish state’s military supremacy.
On Lebanon’s border with Syria, meanwhile, state media and officials said at least three airstrikes hit near the town of Arsal in Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, 7 miles from the Syrian border. One blast wounded a Syrian refugee woman and girl, a resident said.
Deputy Mayor Ahmad Fliti said at least eight strikes hit around the town’s edges and the desolate Wadi Hmaied area, where hundreds of Syrian refugees live in a sprawling tent encampment.
Also Wednesday, a panel of United Nations investigators said Wednesday in a new report that evidence shows chemical weapons used in two deadly attacks last year came from the Syrian government’s stockpile.
The panel’s experts also identified more than 40 government-run detention centers with documented torture cases and said widespread attacks and sieges on civilian areas in Syria by pro-government forces are leading to mass casualties, malnutrition and starvation. They said rebels have committed war crimes, including murder, executions, torture, hostage-taking, enforced disappearances, rape and using child soldiers.
The commission led by Brazilian diplomat Paulo Sergio Pinheiro also concluded that the five permanent U.N. Security Council members - Britain, China, France, Russia and the U.S. - have failed to act on all of Syria’s “grave violations,” which threaten international peace and security.
Information for this article was contributed by Josef Federman, Albert Aji and John Heilprin of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 03/06/2014