By Euronews with AP
Published on
Israeli forces have killed at least 13 people, including women and children, in their deadliest attack on Syria since they seized southern part of the country a year ago.
According to Syrian officials and state news agency SANA, Israeli forces raided the village of Beit Jin seeking to detain local men, but opened fire when they were confronted by residents on Friday, also causing dozens of families to flee the area. Syria’s Foreign Ministry defined the attack as a “horrific massacre”.
Israel said on Friday that it had carried out an operation in Beit Jin to apprehend members of the Jamaa Islamiya militant group who were planning IED and rocket attacks into Israel. It said other militants opened fire on the troops, injuring six soldiers, and that forces returned fire, supported by aircraft. According to Israel, the operation has now ended, all suspects have been detained and several militants were killed.
A local official, Walid Okasha, told The AP that those killed were civilians. Victims also included a couple and their two children, as well as the children’s uncle and another man who had married the previous day.
Firas Daher, a Beit Jin resident, said that troops moved in around 3 a.m. and encountered “slight resistance, with light weapons.” He said Israeli forces responded with drones, helicopters and heavy machine-gun fire. “Whenever anyone moved inside the village, or any car moved, it would get hit. When we tried to take injured people to the hospital, they struck the car carrying them,” he said.
Since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad in December 2024, Israeli forces have seized a stretch of southern Syria that once formed part of a UN-monitored buffer zone created under a 1974 disengagement agreement.
Israeli troops have since carried out regular operations in towns and villages both inside and beyond the zone, including raids to capture people it accuses of being militants. Israel has also conducted hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian military sites and has pushed for a demilitarised area south of Damascus.
Armed residents have confronted Israeli raids several times. In April, troops stormed the town of Nawa and, after being challenged by locals, carried out airstrikes that killed nine people. A month earlier, Israeli forces killed six people during similar clashes in the village of Koayiah.
During a previous raid in Beit Jin in June, Israeli forces detained several people it described as Hamas members, a claim disputed by locals, and killed a man whose family said suffered from schizophrenia.
On Friday, Syria’s government urged the international community to take “urgent action” to stop Israeli operations whilst condemning the incursion as a violation of national sovereignty.
Tensions rose further in the region earlier this week when an Israeli strike in Beirut killed a senior Hezbollah official described by Israel as the group’s chief of staff.
On Tuesday, the United Nations said Israel had killed at least 127 civilians, including children, in its strikes on Lebanon since the ceasefire a year ago.