(AP) The Israeli military says it targeted and killed seven “armed terror operatives” who had crossed into Israeli territory in the southern Golan Heights.
Military spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said on Thursday that Israel tracked the armed persons approaching the border on Wednesday night and a military aircraft struck as they attempted to cross a security fence on the Israeli size of the frontier.
A subsequent search of the area yielded several assault rifles and explosives. He said a preliminary assessment was that the infiltrators were Islamic State militants.
The military troops were on “high alert and readiness” following the airstrike in the southern Golan Heights.
The army’s announcement came shortly after Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman toured a Patriot missile defense battery in northern Israel during a military preparedness drill.
Meanwhile, Russia’s Defense Ministry says United Nations peacekeepers have returned to patrol the frontier between Syria and the Golan Heights for first time in years.
Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy of the Russian General Staff says the U.N. peacekeepers, aided by Russian forces, conducted their first patrolling mission in the area on Thursday.
Rudskoy talked to reporters at a press conference in Moscow.
The peacekeeping mission was halted in 2014 amid the violence in Syrian’s civil war.