BICOM

The Israeli military killed seven heavily armed ISIS fighters as they approached the Israeli border on Wednesday night.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) tracked the ISIS group as they moved toward the southern section of the Syrian-controlled Golan Heights and near to the triangular borders between Israel, Jordan and the demilitarised zone in the Golan Heights. At 10.30pm they were were targeted by an Israeli Air Force (IAF) aircraft because Israeli intelligence believed they were about to carry out an attack.

IDF spokesman Lt Col Jonathan Conricus said: “The gunmen had made it some 200 meters past the ‘alpha line’ but did not manage to reach the technical fence bordering the Israeli Golan Heights.They were in battle formation and it’s our assessment they were on their way to carry out an attack on Israeli targets. In a search completed today [2 August] conducted by IDF troops on the ground, 7 bodies were found in the location as well as 5 AK-47 assault rifles, explosives and what appears to be grenades.”

The Jordanian army said yesterday that it had killed a number of ISIS fighters who had tried to approach its northern border with Syria. The incident on Tuesday came as clashes raged between Syrian regime forces and ISIS fighters in the Yarmuk Basin region of southwestern Syria.

The Russian Defence Ministry confirmed yesterday that Russian military police have been deployed on the Syrian-held Golan Heights and plan to set up eight observation posts, after weeks of mounting volatility in the area.

Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman told journalists while visiting Israeli air defences: “In Syria, as far as we are concerned, the situation is returning to the previous one before the civil war, meaning there is a clear address, there is responsibility and there is a central government.”

The Russian presence on the Golan border alongside the UN peacekeeping mission does, however, represent a major change to the status quo before the war.

Israel is concerned that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s capture of the south from could allow Iranian troops to take up positions close to the Israeli border.

Syrian state media SANA said on Thursday night that air defences had destroyed a “hostile target” west of Damascus. An Israeli military spokeswoman declined to comment on the report.