Israel scores ‘direct hits’
Attack launched on mobile artillery in response to mortar fire
JERUSALEM— The Israeli army said Monday that it had targeted and hit a Syrian mobile artillery battery after an errant mortar shell fired during fighting between Syrian troops and rebels landed near an army post in the Israeli-held Golan Heights.
It was the first time Israeli forces had engaged Syrian troops across the Golan frontier since the 1973 Middle East war, and it came a day after the army fired a guided antitank missile into Syria as a warning after another stray mortar round hit a military post.
The move came as Syria’s newly named opposition leader Mouaz Alkhatib, a soft-spoken cleric backed by Washington and the Gulf Arab states, launched his quest on Monday for international recognition as a government-in-waiting to topple President Bashar Assad.
The renewed fire from Israel on Monday further heightened concerns that the Syrian conflict could draw in Israeli forces stationed in the Golan Heights, a strategic plateau taken by Israel from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War. The ceasefire line in the Golan, where Israeli and Syrian troops are separated under terms of a disengagement agreement, has been quiet for decades.
The fighting in Syria has already led to sporadic clashes on the country’s borders with Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, raising fears that it could trigger a wider conflict.
An Israeli army statement said a mortar round fired “as part of the internal conflict inside Syria” landed harmlessly Monday in an open area near an army outpost in the central Golan Heights. The same post was hit Sunday by a stray mortar shell.
Israeli troops responded by firing “tank shells toward the source of the fire, confirming direct hits,” the statement said. Military officials said that the tank fire hit a Syrian mobile artillery unit and that there was no response from Syrian forces.
There was no immediate comment from Syria on the strike.
The Israeli army said it had lodged a complaint with UN forces stationed between Israeli and Syrian lines in the Golan Heights, warning Israel would respond “severely” to fire from Syrian territory.
Syria’s new opposition assembly kept working to enhance its regional clout on Monday. Western and Arab enemies of Assad hope the creation of a new Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revo- lutionary Forces can finally unify a fractious and ineffective opposition. Alkhatib, the group’s leader and a former imam of a Damascus mosque, flew to Cairo to seek the Arab League’s blessing for the new assembly, the day after he was unanimously elected to lead it. He made a concerted effort to address the sectarian and ethnic acrimony underlying 20 months of civil war that has killed 38,000 people. “We demand freedom for every Sunni, Alawi, Ismaili, Christian, Druze, Assyrian . . . and rights for all parts of the harmonious Syrian people,” he said, calling on Syrian soldiers to desert and all sects to unite. His assembly was recognized by the six Sunni Muslim-ruled kingdoms of the Gulf Co-operation Council as “the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.” Washington said it would back it “as it charts a course toward the end of Assad’s bloody rule and the start of the peaceful, just, democratic future.” The Arab League welcomed the formation of the new body, called on other opposition groups to join it and described it as “a legitimate representative and a primary negotiator,” but fell short of calling it the new authority in Syria. Rebels and opposition politicians formed Alkhatib’s new opposition coalition after days of wrangling in Qatar under intense U.S. and Qatari pressure. Backers hope the new body will give rebels inside Syria more clout and reassure religious and ethnic minorities, after a Syrian National Council made up mainly of exiled Islamists proved ineffective as the main opposition voice. With files from Reuters