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Asharq Al-Awsat
Asharq Al-Awsat
World
Asharq Al-Awsat

Refugees Briefly Approach Golan Heights as Regime Pounds Syria’s Quneitra

Israeli soldiers in the occupied Golan Heights. (Reuters)

Dozens of people briefly approached on Tuesday the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from nearby Syrian refugee encampments.

As they made it some 200 meters from the border, Israeli soldiers deployed at a nearby frontier fence ordered them to go back.

"You are on the border of the State of Israel. Go back, we don't want to hurt you," the soldier shouted in Arabic through a loudspeaker at the crowd, live Reuters TV footage showed.

The Syrians, who seemed to be seeking help or sanctuary, turned back and returned to their encampments. Some stopped mid-way and waved white cloths in the direction of the Israeli frontier.

The Syrian regime is pressing a Russian-backed offensive against opposition factions in the area.

On Tuesday, air strikes killed seven civilians in the sensitive southwestern province of Syria bordering the Golan Heights, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"Six civilians including two women and three children were killed in air strikes near Ain al-Tineh" on Quneitra's border with Daraa province, stated the war monitor.

It was not immediately clear whether the strikes were carried out by the regime or Russia, it added.

In the west of the adjacent province of Daraa, Russian air raids killed one civilian near the village of Al-Aliya, said the Britain-based monitor.

"Since Tuesday morning, heavy Russian air strikes and barrel bombs dropped by the regime have been targeting an area straddling Quneitra and Daraa," Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.

UOSSM, a medical charity that operates in the area, said a barrel bomb dropped by regime forces had killed more than 10 people in Ain al-Tineh, most of them women and children.

Ahmad al-Dbis, UOSSM safety and security manager, said another 35 people had been wounded in the attack which had hit a school.

In two days since Sunday, at least 43 regime fighters have been killed in both Daraa and Quneitra, while 48 opposition fighters have lost their lives, the Observatory said.

More than 350,000 people have been killed and millions displaced by Syria's war since it started in 2011 with a brutal crackdown on anti-regime protests.

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