Israeli forces killed at least 13 people today when they stormed a Syrian village and opened fire after locals resisted, Syrian officials said.
It is Israel's deadliest attack since the country's soldiers seized part of southern Syria a year ago.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry described the attack as a "horrific massacre", saying women and children were among those killed.
Syria's state news agency SANA reported that Israeli forces entered the village of Beit Jin with the aim of capturing local men and opened heavy fire after encountering resistance. Dozens of families fled the area.
Israeli authorities said today they had carried out an operation to arrest suspects from the extremist group Jemaah Islamiyah, who were planning attacks on Israel with improvised explosive devices and rockets. Other extremists reportedly opened fire on Israeli soldiers, wounding six, and the soldiers returned fire.
Israel added that the operation was complete, that all suspects had been arrested and that a number of extremists had been killed.
A local official told The Associated Press that the civilians killed included a man, his wife, two children and a brother, as well as another man who had married the day before.
Since the fall of former Syrian President Bashar Assad from power in December 2024, Israeli forces have held part of southern Syria, which was previously a UN-patrolled buffer zone, under a 1974 disengagement agreement.
Israeli soldiers regularly carry out operations in villages and towns inside and outside the zone, including raids during which they kidnap people they claim are extremists. Israel has also carried out hundreds of airstrikes on Syrian military positions and demanded the establishment of a demilitarized zone south of Damascus.
Israel claims to have preemptively occupied a 400-square-kilometer demilitarized buffer zone in southern Syria to prevent extremists from entering the area after Islamist rebels ousted Assad from power.
Although Israel says the move is temporary, critics accuse the country of exploiting the unrest in Syria to seize territory. Israel still controls the Golan Heights, which it captured in the 1967 war and later annexed, a move not recognized by most of the international community.
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