Explosions hit Syrian town

Film shows Syria rebels beheading boy: monitor

BEIRUT/AMMAN, July 20, (Agencies): Syrian rebels and a monitoring group said two explosions that struck a Syrian town near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Wednesday were caused by an Israeli air strike but Lebanon’s Hezbollah blamed rocket fire by al-Qaedalinked militants.

At least one blast struck near the governorate building in Baath City, capital of the southern province of Quneitra which borders the Golan region.

The town is held by pro-Syrian government forces, including the army and Hezbollah fighters. The Nusra Front, Western-backed rebels, and groups which have pledged allegiance to Islamic State also operate in the region.

A Syrian military source said two rockets had hit the town but their origin was unknown. “There is information that there was a rocket which fell on one of a government headquarters in Quneitra in the area of the town of Baath,” he said.

Two Syrian rebels said an Israeli jet had been seen circling the area and carried out an air strike on a military position.

“Our information is that the attack targeted a Hezbollah outpost,” said Maher al Ali, a spokesman for the Syrian Revolutionaries Front, a Western-backed rebel group.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said an Israeli jet fired a rocket near the governorate building. It said it had no information on casualties.

Hezbollah said Nusra Front fired two rockets loaded with high explosives towards Baath City, causing civilian deaths. “The Israeli enemy was monitoring the launchpoint of the rockets next to the Nusra positions. There is no truth to (reports of) any raids by the Israeli enemy,” it said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said:

A Syrian man carries a child who was retrieved under the rubble of a collapsed building following a reported air strike on the rebel-held neighbourhood of Sakhur in the northern city of Aleppo on July 19. Civilians in rebel-held parts of Syria’s Aleppo expressed fears on July 18, 2016 of a lengthy government siege, as food supplies dwindled after regime troops seized the only road into the city’s east. The government advance, which has been backed by a Russian air offensive,

is seen as a major setback for opposition forces in Syria’s second city. (AFP)

“We do not respond to reports of this kind.”

Though formally neutral on the civil war, Israel has targeted Hezbollah officials and arms convoys inside Syria several times during the conflict.

In January last year it carried out a helicopter attack in Quneitra province that killed a top Iranian Revolutionary Guard general and several Hezbollah members including a son of the group’s late military commander, Jihad Mughniyeh.

Wednesday’s incident took place three days after Israel said it fired missiles towards an unmanned drone that briefly entered Israeli-controlled airspace from Syria.

The Golan Heights is a strategic plateau that Israel captured from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war, and annexed in a move that has not won international recognition.

Meanwhile, a video circulated on social media Tuesday depicts rebel fighters beheading a boy after capturing him north of Syria’s second city Aleppo, a monitor said.

The video shows the boy laying in the back of a truck when a fighter begins to cut off his head with a small knife.

One fighter shouts “we will leave no one in Handarat”, which is north of Aleppo city where there has been fighting between rebels and regime forces.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed that the video depicts rebel fighters.

In an earlier clip, the boy was sitting in the back of the truck with fighters around him accusing him with being a member of Al Quds brigade, a Palestinian group fighting with the regime forces.