A Syrian group took responsibility for the firing of two mortar shells at Israel Thursday morning. The rockets were fired at the Hermon ski site. No one was injured and no damage was reported. This is the first time since the beginning of the civil war in Syria that the Hermon was targeted. The upper section of the Hermon has been closed to visitors, but the lower section was still open, officials said. The IDF has increased its patrols and surveillance in the area.
There have been several recent incidents of mortar shells fired from Syria hitting different areas of the Golan. Until now, it was thought that those shells were fired by accident, but the notification by the “Shahid Brigades of the Abd al-Kajr al-Husseini Jihad Brigades” Thursday – a part of another terror group called “Free Palestine Movement” - has triggered a reevaluation of those incidents by defense officials.
The group apparently works in coordination with the Syrian government, which declared several weeks ago that it would encourage terror attacks against Israel, in the wake of the bombing of convoys that were transporting chemical weapons from Syria to Hizbullah terrorists.
In a video message, the group said that it fired the rockets on the occasion of “Nakba Day,” the date Arabs have chosen to mourn their defeat when Israel was established in 1948. “We are taking revenge for the martyrs that have killed,” the message said. “We tell the Zionists that we are opening a campaign of revenge.”