The Israeli military said on Saturday that its troops were helping UN peacekeepers in the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights to repel an attack “by armed individuals”.
“A short time ago, an attack was carried out by armed individuals on a UN post in the Hader area of Syria,” the army said in a statement, referring to a town on the edge of the UN-guarded buffer zone on the Golan. Heights.
“The (Israeli army) is currently assisting UN forces in repelling the attack.”
There was no immediate comment from the UN force.
Earlier on Saturday, Syrian rebels took control of the provincial capital Quneitra, about 12 kilometers south of Hader, Britain-based war monitor the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The long-stalled Syrian civil war erupted again late last month, with rebels sweeping through the country and capturing several major cities.
The military said army chief Herzi Halevi visited the Syrian border on Saturday and said his country was “not intervening in events in Syria” but was “working to thwart and prevent threats in the area”.
The military declined to comment Saturday evening on whether the attack was underway.
On Friday, the Israeli military said it was “reinforcing air and ground forces” in Israeli-occupied parts of the Golan in response to the situation in Syria. And on Saturday it said it had carried out exercises to ensure the readiness of troops.
Israel captured most of the Golan Heights during the 1967 Six-Day War and later annexed the area in a manner that was never recognized by the international community as a whole.
A UN peacekeeping force, UNDOF, has patrolled a buffer zone between the zones controlled by Israel and Syria since 1974.
In August 2014, Islamist rebels attacked UNDOF and took more than forty Fijian peacekeepers hostage, holding them captive for almost two weeks.
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