Israel captures gunman from Syria
Reuters
Date: 04-15-05
JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A Palestinian gunman infiltrated the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from Syria and fired on Israeli troops on Friday in a rare flare-up on the border that the Jewish state blamed on Damascus.
The army said it captured the lone attacker, a 21-year-old militant belonging to Fatah, the Palestinians' ruling faction, and that he told interrogators he had planned to abduct an Israeli soldier and take him back to Syria.
No casualties were reported, but media reports said the army had launched an inquiry into how the gunman managed to breach defences along the heavily fortified border.
Israel, which recently accused Syria of trying to disrupt an Israeli-Palestinian truce, called the incident a "grave violation" of U.N.-brokered security arrangements set up in the area after the 1973 Middle East war.
"The Syrians should not be allowing armed terrorists to cross the border," an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman said. "We demand ... that the agreement be strictly upheld."
There was no immediate comment from Syria, which for decades has sought to recover the Golan Heights Israel captured Israel in the 1967 Middle East war.
Israeli officials have voiced suspicions Syria wants to undermine Israeli-Palestinian peace moves to deflect international attention from a U.S.-led campaign to speed up the withdrawal of Syrian forces from neighbouring Lebanon.
The gunman, who came from the Palestinians' al-Yarmouk refugee camp in Syria, penetrated a border fence armed with a shotgun and fired into an Israeli army post in an attempt to blow up petrol tanks, Israeli officials said.
He was surrounded and captured after running out of ammunition.
Israel's Army Radio said the man told interrogators he had wanted to avenge the his parents' deaths in one of Israel's military offensives in Lebanon in the 1980s.
ISRAELI DEMANDS
Israel has long demanded that arch-foe Syria stop sheltering leaders of Palestinian militant groups that have spearheaded attacks on Israelis both in the Jewish state and the occupied Palestinian territories during a 4-1/2-year-old uprising.
Syria says its backing for Palestinian fighters is purely political.
Israel carried out an air raid deep inside Syria in 2003 against a suspected Palestinian militant training camp following a suicide bombing at a Haifa restaurant that killed 23 people.
Israel again pointed the finger at Damascus for a Palestinian suicide bombing that killed five people in Tel Aviv on February 25, saying Syrian-based militants ordered the attack and thus Syria shared responsibility. Syria denied any role.
Fighting between Israeli forces and Syrian-backed Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas has flared sporadically on the Jewish state's northern border, but the Golan has been largely calm for decades even though Israel and Syria remain officially at war.
Israeli and Syrian negotiators last held peace talks in 2000 that foundered over Golan's future. Syria has called repeatedly for the talks to resume.
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said Syrian forces must first pull out of Lebanon and stop supporting Hizbollah and Palestinian militants before Israel would consider negotiations.
The last major incident in the Golan was in January 2003, when Israeli troops shot dead an armed Syrian who they said was part of a group that had opened fire on them.
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