Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israeli forces had occupied a buffer zone in the Golan Heights established by a 1974 ceasefire agreement with Syria.
Netanyahu said the decades-old agreement had broken down and Syrian troops had abandoned their positions, necessitating an Israeli takeover.
Israel occupied the Golan Heights in 1967 and annexed it.
The international community, except for the United States, views it as occupied Syrian territory.
(BEta)
Sources close to various extremist organizations in Gaza said today that the Palestinian Islamist Hamas asked them to prepare information about the hostages they are holding as part of preparations for a cease-fire and an agreement on the exchange of detainees, according to Israeli media.
Hamas told the factions, among them the Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the People's Committees of Resistance, to announce, among other things, whether the hostages are alive or dead, said sources to Agence France-Presse.
96 of the 251 hostages taken in an attack by Palestinian extremists in southern Israel on October 7 last year are believed to be still in Gaza, including at least 34 who the Israeli military says are dead.
Qatar's prime minister said on Saturday that momentum for a ceasefire and the release of hostages has been renewed after the election of Donald Trump as the new US president.
A Hamas source told AFP that there had been "intense contacts between Hamas, Qatari, Egyptian and Turkish mediators" and that the organization expected a new round of negotiations to begin in Cairo in the coming days.
The same source called on Israel to stop the war, arguing that the presence of Israeli forces makes it difficult to reach all the detainees.
Israel claims for the second time that it will not stop the conflict unless all the hostages are returned and Hamas is completely defeated as a military and ruling force in Gaza.
(Beta)
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