UN saw drones before Israeli air strike on Syria

United Nations, Occupied Jerusalem: UN peacekeepers serving in the Golan Heights saw drones flying before an Israeli air strike on Syria that killed an Iranian general, a UN spokesman said on Monday.

Six Hezbollah fighters were killed in the raid near Quneitra on the Syria-controlled side of the Golan Heights.

An Israeli security source said that an Israeli helicopter carried out the strike but the UN account raised the possibility that drones may have been used.

UN spokesman Farhan Haq said the UN observer force in the Golan on Sunday “observed two unmanned aerial vehicles flying from the Alpha [Israeli-occupied] side and crossing the ceasefire line”.

“An hour later, smoke was observed coming from the general direction of position 30,” Haq told reporters.

UN peacekeepers then saw the drones flying over the area of “position 30” and again crossing the ceasefire line, he added.

“The incident is a violation of the 1974 agreement on disengagement” between Israel and Syria, he added.

The Israeli regime is meanwhile on high alert for possible attacks from Hezbollah, Israeli defence officials said on Tuesday.

Israel has boosted deployment of its “Iron Dome” anti-missile aerial defence system along its northern frontier, which borders Lebanon and Syria, and has increased surveillance activities in the area, the officials said. The regime’s Security Cabinet is scheduled to meet to discuss a potential escalation in violence, they said.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss security deliberations publicly.

Hezbollah claims the Israelis carried out Sunday’s strike on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, which killed a prominent Hezbollah fighter, a senior Iranian general, and five other Hezbollah members.

The prominent fighter killed, Jihad Mughniyeh, was the son of Emad Mughniyeh — a top Hezbollah operative widely considered to have built Hezbollah’s military operations infrastructure and the second most revered figure inside Hezbollah. He was assassinated in 2008 in Damascus in a bombing that Hezbollah says was carried out by the Israeli Mossad spy agency.

Thousands of mourners marched in a Beirut funeral procession on Monday for Jihad Mughniyeh, chanting “Death to Israel”.

Since Syria’s conflict began in March 2011, Israel has reportedly carried out several airstrikes in Syria that have targeted sophisticated weapons systems, including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles, believed to be destined for Hezbollah.

The last such airstrike was in early December, when warplanes struck near Damascus’ international airport, as well as outside a town close to the Syria-Lebanon border. Israel has not commented on its role in those strikes.