28/08/2014 11:32
Al Qaeda group seizes border post
Rebels aided by al Qaeda-linked militants seized control of the only border crossing between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Wednesday, CNN reported.
The capture of the Quneitra crossing by Syrian rebels, including members of the al Qaeda-linked al-Nusra Front, represents a new dynamic in a war long feared not only for its deadly effects inside Syria but for threatening to widen into a destabilizing regional conflict.
The border crossing made headlines earlier this week, when American journalist Peter Theo Curtis was handed over on the Syrian side of the checkpoint by the al-Nusra Front to U.N. peacekeepers.
During the fighting on Wednesday between Syrian forces and rebels, three errant mortar rounds and some small-arms fire crossed into Israeli-controlled territory, IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner said.
An Israeli military officer was moderately injured, the IDF said on Twitter, and Israeli forces responded by striking two Syrian military positions.
The Israeli military has closed the area around the border crossing.
An activist in the Golan Heights, Shamil al-Jolani, said the Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiya and other rebel groups, not all of them Islamist, also were involved in the fighting.