Syrian security forces have arrested three members of a cell linked to the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah and dismantled rocket launchers in their possession in the southern Yarmouk river basin.
The area near the occupied Golan Heights has been the scene of an increasing number of Israeli incursions this year. Israeli troops crossed into southern Syria and areas west of Damascus, and occupied parts of these regions, soon after militant forces led by current President Ahmad Al Shara ousted the Assad regime in December 2024.
The three men had been involved in a Hezbollah “sabotage plot” in the Yarmouk river basin, the official news agency Sana reported late on Tuesday. It said the launchers had been “completely dismantled”.
“The operation was a result of precise surveillance of an attempt by the cell to prepare rocket launchers and execute attacks,” the agency said, without specifying the target. It gave the initials of the three men, without mentioning their nationalities.
The General Intelligence Directorate released photographs showing Syrian security forces removing the weapons seized in what it called a pre-emptive operation that thwarted the Iran-backed militia.
Hezbollah and other pro-Iranian groups had established proxies on the Syrian-controlled side of the Yarmouk river basin during the rule of former president Bashar Al Assad. After the 2023 Gaza war broke out, the basin became a launch pad for Iranian-supplied rockets fired at Israeli troops in the Golan. However, Israeli attacks in Lebanon and Syria vastly weakened Hezbollah and, by the end of 2024, the group had withdrawn most of its forces from Syria, setting the stage for the Assad regime's fall.
Last month, Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli army was mounting “daily activity here to thwart threats, to eliminate remnants of the old regime, to prevent dangerous consolidation of the new regime” and “protect our communities and our border”.
The US, which backs Syria's current rulers, has supervised several meetings between Israeli and Syrian officials in an effort to negotiate a peace deal between the two countries. They discussed halting Israeli attacks on Syria and the return of Israeli forces to a 1974 armistice line adjacent to the Golan, the strategic plateau occupied by Israel for almost six decades.
