Israeli forces raid southern Syria town near Golan Heights in overnight attack

Israeli army forces stormed a village in the Quneitra countryside in southern Syria in an overnight raid, local media said on Tuesday.

According to the state-run Al-Ikhbariya TV, the Israeli troops raided the Suwaisa village, fired flare shells in the sky, and carried out searches in the area amid confrontations from the residents.

A young citizen was detained by the army forces, the channel said.

The overnight attack becomes the 4th Israeli raid in August on Quneitra, which is located within the disengagement zone in the occupied Golan Heights.

Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz said through the US social media company X that the Israeli army “will remain at the peak of Mount Hermon and in the security zone.”

He claimed that the army’s presence is necessary to “protect the Golan and Galilee settlements,” and the Druze community in Syria.

For the past seven months, the Israeli army has occupied Mount Hermon (Jabal al-Sheikh) and a 15-kilometer- (9.3.-mile-) wide security strip in parts of southern Syria, controlling more than 40,000 Syrians inside the seized buffer zone.

After the fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in late 2024, Israel expanded its occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights by seizing the demilitarized buffer zone, a move that violated the 1974 Disengagement Agreement with Syria.

The new Syrian administration, in place since late December 2024, has not posed any threat to Israel, yet the Israeli military has repeatedly crossed into Syrian territory and carried out airstrikes that killed civilians and destroyed Syria's military sites and infrastructure.