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IDF finds, disarms landmines planted in Israeli territory along Syria border

  • November 17, 2020

The Israel Defense Forces discovered a number of mines that had been planted within Israeli territory near the border with Syria on Tuesday, the military said.

The mines were disarmed by a team of combat engineers, the IDF said.

The mines were planted in a buffer zone controlled by Israel in the southern Golan Heights, but on the Syrian side of the security fence.

The IDF said it held the Syrian government responsible for the matter.

The military said it had been monitoring the area for months for such an attack. A similar attempt to plant explosives was uncovered in the same area this summer.

In that incident, the army killed four armed men who crossed into Israeli territory from Syria and planted improvised explosive devices inside an unmanned IDF outpost along the border.

The next day IDF troops scanned the area and found a gun and a backpack with several more bombs ready for use. Those items were found inside Israeli territory, 25 meters from the border, the army said.

Under the 1974 ceasefire agreement between Israel and Syria, which ended the previous year’s Yom Kippur War, a demilitarized zone was established between the two countries.

Last month, the IDF completed its premier exercise of the year, a large-scale simulation of war in the north against Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies, and of a smaller conflict in the Gaza Strip.

The northern border has been tense in recent months, following as-yet unfulfilled threats of retaliation by the Hezbollah, after one of the terror group’s fighters was killed in Syria in an airstrike attributed to Israel in July.

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