by News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
Syrian rebels lose control of significant parts of southwest Syria as 160,000 refugees flee heavy bombardment
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Smoke rises over
buildings hit by a Syrian government forces
attack in southern Syria on
Thursday
Photo: AP
Israel's
military said it deployed additional tank and artillery forces on the
Syrian front on Sunday as a precaution given intensified fighting over
the border between the Syrian army and rebels.
"The forces deployed this morning as part
of preparations and readiness, in light of developments on the Syrian
Golan Heights," the military said in a tweet Sunday, adding that Israel
was sticking to its longtime policy of non-intervention in Syria's civil
war.
"The IDF will continue to maintain its
non-involvement in Syria while at the same time responding forcefully to
any violation of Israel's sovereignty or endangerment of Israel's
citizens," the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said in a statement.
In Syria, meanwhile, a string of rebel-held
towns and villages accepted government rule on Saturday as insurgent
lines collapsed in parts of southwest Syria under an intense bombardment
that the United Nations says has forced 160,000 people to flee.
The southwest was an early hotbed of the
uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad and defeat there stands
to leave rebels with just one remaining stronghold – the area around
Idlib province bordering Turkey in the northwest.
Rebels met Russian negotiators on Saturday
to seek peace terms for Daraa province, where most of their southwest
territory is located, but said these failed.
Moscow is Assad's strongest ally and its air power since 2015 has been crucial to his recapture of vast swathes of Syria.
Local groups in many towns seized by the
army in recent days negotiated their own surrender deals independently
of the main rebel operations, after heavy air raids.
Rebels said they had taken back several
towns and villages lost to the army earlier in the day, but their
overall loss of ground was still significant.
State television broadcast footage from
inside the towns of Dael and al-Ghariya al-Gharbiya, where people were
shown chanting pro-Assad slogans. A war monitor and a military media
unit run by the government's ally Hezbollah said numerous other towns
and villages had agreed to come back under Assad's rule.
Fierce battles were still ongoing around
Daraa city, near the Jordanian border, where the army had repeatedly
failed to capture a disused air base, rebels said. The northwestern
chunk of Daraa province remains in opposition hands.
Air raids meanwhile intensified, said the
monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as displaced people
flocked to the border areas least likely to be hit.
U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights
Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein warned, meanwhile, that many civilians in Syria
were at risk of being trapped between government forces, rebels, and
Islamic State which has a small foothold there – an outcome he said
would be a "catastrophe."
"The real concern is that we are going to
see a repetition of what we saw in eastern Ghouta – the bloodshed, the
suffering, the civilians being held, being under a siege," U.N. human
rights spokeswoman Liz Throssell said.
After the peace talks failed on Saturday,
warplanes launched a new wave of strikes on the rebel-held towns of
Bosra al-Sham, al-Nuaima and other areas, the Observatory reported,
causing deaths, injuries and damage.
One strike killed at least 10 people
including five children in the town of al-Sahwa, east of Daraa, it said,
raising to 126 the number of civilians killed in the offensive since
fighting escalated on June 19.
The army's offensive follows the
capitulation of rebel enclaves near Homs and Damascus, including eastern
Ghouta, which was recaptured after a scorched-earth assault that killed
over a thousand civilians and laid waste to several towns.
Warfare in the southwest could risk a
further escalation because of its proximity to Israel. The Israelis have
already targeted Iran-backed militias fighting in support of Assad's
army, which Israel has vowed to keep far from its borders.
The government's offensive so far has
focused on Daraa province, which borders Jordan, but not Quneitra
province abutting the Israeli Golan Heights.
The entire southwest is part of a
"de-escalation zone" agreed upon last year by Russia, the United States
and Jordan. Despite Washington's threats that it would respond to
breaches of that arrangement, it has so far shown no sign of doing so.
Jordan, which has already taken in more
than half a million displaced Syrians since the war began, and Israel
have both declared that at this time they will not open their borders to
refugees.
In an interview with Israeli radio station
102 FM, Israel's Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said: "I think we must
prevent the entry of refugees from Syria to Israel, in the past we have
prevented such cases."
The Israel Defense Forces said an increased
number of civilians had been spotted in refugee camps on the Syrian
side of the Golan over the past few days, and that it had sent aid
supplies at four locations to people fleeing hostilities.
Late on Saturday, the Jordanian government
said its army had also started delivering humanitarian aid to thousands
who had taken shelter across the frontier.
At the meetings with Russia, rebel
negotiators sought a deal for all of Daraa province to come back under
government sovereignty, but without the army or police entering the
area, an insurgent spokesman said.
But the talks, in the town of Bosra
al-Sham, whose Roman citadel is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site,
collapsed as the insurgents rejected proposed terms for their surrender,
a rebel spokesman said.
The Kremlin said Russian President Vladimir
Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump will have a detailed discussion
about Syria when they meet in July.
News Agencies and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/07/01/israel-deploys-tanks-artillery-forces-at-syria-border/
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