Jordan and Israel kill Daesh militants flushed out of Syria's Golan

The elimination of Daesh from strategic plateau that divides foes Israel and Syria, means the situation is returning to how it was before the civil war according to Israel's defence minister.

As regime leader Bashar Assad has taken control in southern Syria, both Jordan and Israel say they have had to deal with fleeing Daesh militants.
AP

As regime leader Bashar Assad has taken control in southern Syria, both Jordan and Israel say they have had to deal with fleeing Daesh militants.

Israel and Jordan said on Thursday that their forces had killed Daesh militants who approached their borders after being squeezed out of southwestern Syria by the regime forces of Bashar al Assad.

In a nod to his battlefield gains, Israel's defence minister described victory by Assad, who is on the last push to restore his rule after more than seven years of civil war, as a fait accompli that could calm the Golan Heights.

The strategic plateau divides Israel and Syria, old foes, and saw decades of standoff before the Syrian uprising.

Meanwhile, in a major change to the pre-conflict 2011 status quo, Russian military police began deploying on the Syrian-held Golan and planned to set up eight observation posts in the area, the Defence Ministry in Moscow said.

Reuters

Chief of the Main Operational Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoi speaks during a news briefing, with a map showing the territory of Israel, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria seen in the background.

After weeks of intensive Russian-backed bombing, Syrian regime forces have seized the lush farmland where the Yarmouk River flows, which was once controlled by a group affiliated to Daesh known as the Khaled Bin Walid Army.

The Israeli military said it carried out an air strike on the Golan on Wednesday night, killing seven insurgents it believed were from the Khaled Bin Walid Army and en route to attack an Israeli target.

Separately, the Jordan military said it had clashed with encroaching Khaled Bin Walid Army militants for 24 hours between Tuesday and Wednesday, killing an unspecified number of them.

"We applied rules of engagement and members of the Daesh gang were forced to retreat inside Syria," an army source told Jordanian state news agency Petra.

Assad's sweep of southwest Syria drove hundreds of thousands of refugees toward Israel and Jordan, alarming both.

As tensions peaked last week, Israel shot down a Syrian warplane that it said had strayed into the Israeli-occupied Golan and warned Assad's Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah reinforcements against trying to deploy on the Syrian-held side.

Upbeat

But Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman sounded more upbeat on Thursday as he described an Assad win as a given.

"From our perspective, the situation is returning to how it was before the civil war, meaning there is a real address, someone responsible, and central rule," Lieberman told reporters during a tour of air defence units in northern Israel.

Asked whether Israel should be less wary of possible flare-ups on the Golan – much of which it seized from Syria in a 1967 war and annexed in a move not recognised abroad – Lieberman said, "I believe so. I think this is also in Assad's interest."

There was no immediate Syrian regime response to the border clashes reported by Jordan and Syria on Thursday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitoring group, confirmed fighting between Assad's forces and Daesh on the Syrian-held Golan, which also abuts Jordan.

Russian military police deployed

In Moscow, the Russian Defence Ministry said its deployment of military police on the Syrian-held Golan was aimed at supporting a decades-old UN peacekeeper presence.

It said the new Russian posts would be handed over to the Syrian regime once the situation had stabilised.

Lieberman said, for there to be long-term quiet between Israel and Syria, Assad must abide by a 1974 UN-monitored armistice that set up demilitarised zones on the Golan.

Lieberman reiterated Israel's demand that Iran not set up military bases against it in Syria, nor that Syria be used to smuggle arms to Hezbollah guerrillas in neighbouring Lebanon.

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