An Israeli tank stationed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights opened fire on Thursday (September 21st) in the direction of Syrian territory on the other side of the demarcation line, an AFP journalist found. The journalist, based in Majdal Shams, a Druze village on the part of the Syrian Golan occupied and annexed by Israel, saw the tank fire two shells after hearing three detonations around 16:45 p.m.
The IDF issued a statement saying that "(Israeli) tanks had struck military infrastructure" built "in Ein Altina, on Mount Hermon" in violation of the 1974 disengagement agreement between Israel and Syria following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war.
Since 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian territory.
Israel conquered part of the Golan from Syria in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war before annexing the territory in 1981. This annexation is not recognized by the UN. The tank fire followed by hours an Israeli drone strike that killed two members of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad on the Golan on the Syrian side of the demarcation line, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based NGO that has an extensive network of sources in Syria.
Asked by AFP about this information, the Israeli army declined to comment. Since the beginning of the war in Syria, Israel has carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian territory targeting mainly forces backed by Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah, allies of Damascus and sworn enemies of the Israeli state, as well as the Syrian army.
But the IDF generally observes the utmost silence about the operations attributed to it in Syria, repeating tirelessly, when questioned on the subject, that it has "no comment to make on foreign media reports." On September 14, the official Syrian news agency SANA reported the death of two Syrian soldiers in an Israeli raid on their positions in the west of the country.
