The UN Security Council on Thursday strongly condemns fighting in the buffer zone between Syria and Israel and urges the Syrian government and opposition groups to withdraw from the area which is patrolled by UN peacekeepers.
A resolution sponsored by Russia and the United States and adopted unanimously Thursday by the UN Security Council extends the mandate of the peacekeeping mission known as UNDOF until Dec. 31.
UNDOF has patrolled the buffer zone between Syria and Israel since 1974, a year after the 1973 war. For nearly four decades UNDOF helped enforce a stable truce between the two countries but the Syrian war spilled into the zone.
A picture taken from the Israeli side of the border shows smoke rising near the Israeli-Syrian border in the Golan Heights during fights between the rebels and the Syrian army on June 25, 2017. (Basel Awidat/Flash90)
The six-year conflict has not only seen some intense fighting in the buffer zone but the abduction of peacekeepers by al-Qaeda-linked anti-Syrian government militants, and other attacks that prompted several countries to withdraw their soldiers.
Israel has tried to stay out of the six-year civil war in Syria and refrained from taking sides, but has responded to spillover fire on numerous occasions. The Israeli military said Sunday it attacked a series of targets belonging to the Syrian military, after several projectiles from Syria landed in the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights for a second day.
— AP
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