Fears Israeli rocket strike in Syria will fan flames
AN Israeli strike in Syria has killed the son of a slain top Hezbollah commander and at least five other fighters in a move that could ratchet up tensions with the Lebanese Shia movement, which last week boasted of rockets that can hit any part of the Jewish state.
Hezbollah identified one of the six slain men on Sunday as Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of Imad Mughniyeh, a Hezbollah operative assassinated in 2008 in Damascus.
Hezbollah militants in towns and villages along the border with Israel yesterday went on high alert after the strike by attack helicopters.
In the Shia-dominated areas of south Lebanon and Beirut, the streets emptied quickly as residents feared an escalation.
Hezbollah-run al-Manar TV warned that Israel was “playing with fire that puts the security of the whole Middle East on edge”.
Mughniyeh, who was born in 1989, is one of the most prominent Hezbollah officials to die in Syria since the group entered the fray in 2012, fighting alongside dictator Bashar al-Assad’s forces against the Sunni-led rebellion.
The dead included another senior Hezbollah commander, Mohammed Issa, and at least one Iranian, whom the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said belonged to the Revolutionary Guards.
The group said the Israeli strikes hit two vehicles and a home. It said the fighters were in the area to plan attacks along the Israeli-controlled frontier.
Other Hezbollah officials said that Sunday’s helicopter strike targeted the two Hezbollah vehicles as fighters were inspecting positions in the Golan Heights, close to the Israeli-controlled frontier, in an area known as Mazrat al-Amal. Israel seized part of the Golan Heights plateau from Syria during the 1967 war.
Israel’s military did not comment on Sunday’s incident.
A Syrian activist said Hezbollah was widely rumoured to be training pro-Assad militiamen and Syrian government forces near the area of the strikes. Abu Omar said Mazrat al-Amal was close to rebel positions.
Israel and Hezbollah fought a devastating war in 2006, but since then have largely shied away from direct confrontation.
On Thursday, however, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, boasted the group’s rockets could hit any part of Israel and he threatened to invade the Galilee region of northern Israel in the next war between the two foes.
A Lebanese political analyst, Imad Salamey, said Hezbollah’s hands could be tied because it was so heavily invested in Syria. “It’s an awkward situation,” he said.
Hezbollah was unlikely to open up a second front in Lebanon while so many of its fighters were bogged down in Syria, and it probably would not retaliate from Syria because it “invites increasing involvement by Israel to attack its operation inside Syria”.
“It does not have much to work with,” Mr Salamey said.
Since the Syrian civil war began in March 2011, Israel has carried out several airstrikes in Syria that have targeted sophisticated weapons systems, including Russian-made anti-aircraft missiles and Iranian-made missiles, that are believed to be destined for Hezbollah.
The last such airstrike was in early December, when Israeli warplanes struck near Damascus international airport, as well as outside a town close to the Syria-Lebanon border.
THE AUSTRALIAN