BEIRUT: A group of 21 UN peacekeepers captured by Syrian rebels three days ago has been taken to the border with Jordan and was being handed over to Jordanian authorities, a rebel source and a violence monitoring group said on Saturday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Filipino monitors, who had been held in the village of Jamla since being captured by the rebel Martyrs of Yarmouk brigade on Wednesday, were taken to the border area by the insurgents. A Syrian rebel confirmed the peacekeepers had reached the frontier.
“They have been taken to the Yarmouk valley on the border by the Martyrs brigade,” said Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. “The handover to Jordanian authorities is taking place now.”
There was no immediate comment from Jordanian officials, the United Nations or the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which had said it would be ready to receive the peacekeepers when they left Jamla.
The group — part of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) that has been monitoring a ceasefire line between Syria and Israel in the Golan Heights since 1974 — was seized by the Martyrs of Yarmouk rebel brigade three days ago.
They were held in Jamla, a village 1.6 km from the Israeli-occupied Golan and 10 km north of the Jordan border. After their capture insurgents described them as “guests” and said they would be freed once President Bashar Al Assad’s forces withdrew from around Jamla and stopped shelling.
A brief truce was agreed on Saturday morning to allow for the peacekeepers’ retrieval. Although the two-hour window of that ceasefire passed at midday (1000 GMT) before they could be extracted, the rebels said relative calm had prevailed.
A rescue effort on Friday was delayed by heavy bombardment and abandoned after nightfall, UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said. “(Jamla) is subject to intense shelling by the Syrian armed forces,” he told reporters after briefing the UN Security Council on the situation.
Syria’s nearly two-year civil war has spilled periodically across the Golan Heights ceasefire line and Syria’s borders with Lebanon, Iraq and Turkey, threatening to engulf the region. The conflict began as peaceful protests, but turned violent when Al Assad ordered a crackdown on the demonstrations.
Ladsous warned that once the peacekeepers were freed, “we would strongly expect that there would not be retaliatory action by the Syrian armed forces over the village and its civilian population”.
Syrian UN Ambassador Bashar Ja’afari said the army was targeting areas outside Jamla where he said the rebels were concentrated, not the village itself. “We know for sure what we are doing and we know where the peacekeepers are,” he said.
“The Syrian government forces are doing exactly what they have to do in order to bring back safely the peacekeepers, guarantee the safety and security of the inhabitants of these villages (and) get these armed group out of the area.”
In several videos released on Thursday, the peacekeepers said they were being treated well by civilians and rebels. The United Nations said the captives had been detained by about 30 rebel fighters, but Taseel said the men were “guests,” not hostages, and were being held for their own safety.
Under an agreement brokered by the United States in 1974, Israel and Syria are allowed a limited number of tanks and troops within 20 km of the disengagement line.
A UN report in December said both the Syrian army and rebels had entered the demilitarised area between Syrian and Israeli forces. It said that violence in the area showed the potential for escalation across the frontier, jeopardising the ceasefire between the two countries.
