Hezbollah splinter group in Syria risks confrontation with Israel after rare rocket attack

Israel says it is holding Syrian government responsible for attack suspected to have been carried out by small group with Hezbollah ties

An Israeli soldier looks out over southern Syria from the Israel-occupied Golan Heights. AFP

A small group in southern Syria that once formed part of a Hezbollah network is suspected of carrying out an overnight rocket attack on an Israeli-occupied area in the Golan Heights, sources said on Wednesday as Syrian authorities denied Israeli claims that Damascus was responsible.

The two rockets hit an open area and caused no casualties, according to the Israeli military, which responded with air raids on several Syrian military sites. The US envoy to Syria, Thomas Barack, visited the Golan Heights on Wednesday, indicating the seriousness of the incident.

It was the first such attack on Israel from Syria since rebels led by the Hayat Tahrir Al Sham group toppled former president Bashar Al Assad in December. New President Ahmad Al Shara has sought to consolidate control of the country in the face of sectarian violence, and now faces the fresh challenge of handling Israel's response.

A previously unknown group calling itself the Martyr Mohammed Deif Brigades claimed responsibility. Mr Deif was the military chief of Hamas who was killed by Israel last year in its war to eliminate the Palestinian militant group from Gaza.

Two sources in Jordan, which borders the Golan Heights, said the attack appeared to be the work of a local group with 12 members comprising Palestinian refugees and Syrians from the district of Nawa in Deraa governorate. The rockets were fired from the Sahm Al Golan area, south of Nawa, they said.

It is one of many of small groups that Hezbollah and Iran set up in southern Syria around 2018, three years after Russia's intervention in the Syrian civil war caused significant defeats for rebels fighting the former regime. Tehran and Moscow were the main backers of Mr Al Assad's 24-year rule.

"These groups were designed to be small, nimble and hard to detect," one of the sources said, adding that many of them had kept open lines of communications with Hezbollah and Hamas.

"The Israelis have reacted strongly because they don't want the south to become a launch pad against them again," the source said.

In the final year of the Assad regime, Israeli troops faced increasing rocket and drone attacks that Israel blamed on Iran and its militia allies.

Israel does not trust the HTS-led government that replaced Mr Al Assad and is upset about the support it has received from countries in the region and the West, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the US and the EU. HTS, a group formerly linked with Al Qaeda, was allied with Turkey when it launched the offensive that ended five decades of Assad family rule on December 8.

"We will not allow a return to the reality of October 7," said Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz, referring to the surprise Hamas attack on Israel that started the present war in GAz

Israel responded to the regime change by sending its troops into Syrian territory across the UN buffer zone in the Golan Heights, south-west of Damascus, and bombing military and militia installations across Syria, particularly in southern areas. This has vastly curbed the ability of the new Syrian government to deploy troops and military hardware in the south as it seeks to establish control over the entire country.

Israel's attacks on Syria have subsided in recent weeks, with reports emerging that the two sides had engaged in talks.

On Wednesday, the Syrian Foreign Ministry said Syria does not "pose a threat to anyone in the region" and that "peaceful solutions" are needed across the region.

"The utmost priority in Syria's south is to spread the authority of the state and end the presence of non-state arms," a ministry statement said.