DST News: At least 13 people, including children, were killed in an Israeli military raid on the village of Beit Jinn in southern Syria, state media reported on Friday, marking one of the deadliest Israeli operations in the country in months.
Syria’s state news agency Sana said residents confronted Israeli troops shortly after they entered the village near the occupied Golan Heights, sparking intense clashes. The report said the Israeli military also carried out air strikes and shelling, causing a building to collapse.
Syria’s foreign ministry condemned the incident as a “war crime” and urged the UN Security Council to act against what it called Israel’s “policy of aggression”.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said its troops entered Beit Jinn to detain fighters from Jamaa Islamiya, whom it accused of planning attacks on Israeli civilians. According to the IDF, several armed militants opened fire at the start of the raid, prompting Israeli soldiers to return fire.
The IDF said “all suspects were apprehended” and that “a number of terrorists were eliminated.” It also confirmed that six Israeli soldiers were wounded, three of them seriously.
IDF-released footage showed two air strikes—one hitting a group of people and another striking a building. Additional bodycam video showed soldiers exchanging gunfire in the darkness.
Sana reported that three people were arrested before Israeli forces withdrew. A local hospital director told state media that the bodies of several victims, including five from the same family, had been received, with dozens of others injured.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), based in the UK, confirmed that a building collapsed during the operation.
Syria’s foreign ministry said more than 10 civilians, including women and children, were among the dead.
Israel regularly carries out raids in southern Syria, saying it is acting to stop militant groups from operating near its border. Since the fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad nearly a year ago, Israeli troops have crossed into a demilitarized buffer zone on the Golan Heights—which had long been off-limits under a post-1973 ceasefire agreement.
The UN has said such Israeli deployments violate the disengagement arrangement and has urged both sides to respect the deal.
Meanwhile, US-led efforts to broker a new security agreement between Israel and Syria have made no progress.
Source: BBC
