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IDF reveals more cross border raids into Syria

In rare interview with foreign media, senior IDF command reveals cross border raids against illegal Syrian positions.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

The commander of an IDF division base on the Syrian border said Friday that his forces had carried out several raids in recent weeks against Syrian military fortifications close to the Israel-Syria border on the Golan Heights.

In an interview with Russia’s Tass news agency, 210th Division, Brigadier General Roman Goffman appeared to be detailing additional raids to the one carried out in mid-October. The IDF announced it had crossed into Syria territory to destroy Syrian army positions that had been set up illegally in the neutral demilitarized buffer zone in violation of the ceasefire agreement signed by the two countries.

“Over the past few weeks we have carried out several operations against Syrian fortifications, which were set up directly on the border line and on some our lands,” Goffman said.

“For this reason we attacked and carried out operations. The soldiers who attacked these points blew them up, immediately returned to their positions and did not stay there after the raids,” Goffman noted, adding that the operation was carried out in two stages.

Goffman emphasized that the raids “took place without direct confrontations with the [Syrian] forces” located there.

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“Israel does not currently see any threat from Syria as a state,” but it fears an increase in the concentration of fighters from Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group, which is known to be operating in the northern Golan Heights with the support of Iran.

“The biggest threat I see when I look at Syria’s borders is the establishment of a front line between Iran and Hezbollah in southern Syria against Israel. This is the most important threat. We do not see a threat in Syria and Syria because it represents a country that needs to work and rebuild itself,” Goffman said of the country that has been ravaged by a decade of civil war.