BEIT JINN, Syria — An Israeli military assault on this town in southern Syria early Friday killed at least 13 residents, including several children, according to witnesses, civil defense workers and relatives of the victims. The episode was one of the deadliest since Israel began occupying and carrying out regular military operations in parts of Syria last year.
Israel’s military said in statements that several of its soldiers were injured, three of them seriously, during what it described as an “exchange of fire” in Beit Jinn. It also said Israeli forces arrested three individuals affiliated with Jamaa Islamiya, a Lebanon-based militant group. It accused the individuals of planning attacks on Israel. “Additional terrorists” were hit, the military said, adding it provided “aerial assistance” to Israeli troops.
It made no mention of civilian casualties that residents said were caused by gunfire and heavy Israeli shelling. Those killed included two girls, ages 4 and 17, and a 10-year-old boy, according to their families.
In Beit Jinn, residents described an assault that began with an Israeli patrol around the town late Thursday night, followed by house-to-house raids. Soldiers began firing when residents refused to let them enter the houses, said Raef Qabalan, 44. Some people in Beit Jinn started firing back “to defend themselves,” he said.
After gunfire started, Israeli warplanes, helicopters and drones joined, Qabalan and other residents said.
Israel invaded parts of southern Syria in December last year, shortly after rebel forces led by Ahmed al-Sharaa toppled the government of Bashar al-Assad. In the months that followed, Israel carried out hundreds of airstrikes across Syria, destroying military bases and equipment.
In Syria’s southern Quneitra province, east of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Israeli forces have built bases in what was previously a U.N.-monitored buffer zone — actions that have led Sharaa, now Syria’s president, to criticize Israel’s policies as expansionist and aimed at destabilizing his country. (Sharaa is formerly known by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani.)
In a statement Friday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry called the raid on Beit Jinn a “full-fledged war crime.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has portrayed its military operations as defensive while rebuffing calls from Syria to withdraw from the country. Months of U.S.-brokered negotiations between Syria and Israel, aimed at concluding a security pact that would decrease tensions, have so far yielded nothing.
The attack Friday fit a pattern of frequent Israeli raids and arrests on villages in Quneitra, with wanted residents sometimes disappearing into Israeli detention centers. Residents of Beit Jinn said there had been several other Israeli raids on the town over the past year during which residents were arrested.
This time had been different, though. “When they attacked the civilian houses, some people retaliated,” said Ibrahim Abu Dhaher, 26. “Of course, we will not remain silent.”
In a hospital in Damascus where some of the injured were taken, Ibrahim’s brother, Khalil Abu Dhaher, 49, said he was at his home with his family during the raid and trying to find a safe room in the house when the gunfire appeared to target them “directly.”
Heba, his 17-year-old daughter, was killed. Her sister, Hoda, 9, was injured, he said.
Qassem Hamada, 67, who was also at the hospital, said five of his family members were killed when Israeli munitions struck their house. Among them were his sons Abdulrahman, 25, and Mohammed, 40. Also killed were Mohamed’s wife, Hadiya, 28, and two of their children, Qassem, 10, and Shahad, 4.
All five were buried in a funeral in Beit Jinn on Friday afternoon, attended by dozens of angry mourners.
The strike on the Hamada home destroyed several of its outer walls. A destroyed Israeli jeep was also left behind in the town.
Ahmed Akasha, 57, said two of the men arrested by the Israelis were his cousins, Mohammed and Nidhal Akasha, who were brothers. Three other family members had been killed by Israeli forces in the past few years, the family said. Ahmed’s daughter, Diana, said she did not know why her relatives were being targeted.
Mohamad and Nidhal had worked as laborers, she said. Her brother Hossam, who was killed in an Israeli strike while he was on a motorcycle last year, had been an anti-Assad rebel fighter, she said.
Shadi al-Hassan, the head of civil defense in the region, said in remarks quoted by Syria’s state news agency that ambulances had been unable to enter Beit Jinn for hours during the overnight violence. Israeli aircraft, he said, had targeted “everything that moves.”
Mohamad El Chamaa in Beirut and Lior Soroka in Tel Aviv contributed to this report.
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