ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The Israeli military said on Sunday that it carried out raids across several locations in Druze-majority southern Syria to seize “trafficked weapons,” weeks after deadly violence between Damascus-affiliated forces and Druze fighters near the area.
“Our troops entered 4 locations simultaneously and located numerous trafficked weapons after on-site questioning of several suspects involved in weapons trafficking in the Hader area in southern Syria,” the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement.
Hader, a Druze-majority village, is part of the Golan Heights, under de jure Syrian control but reportedly occupied by Israel since the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in December.
The IDF added that the operation came after “prior intelligence surveillance and an in-depth field investigation.”
Deadly clashes in southern Syria’s Suwayda province in July between Druze fighters and Sunni Bedouin tribes, supported by the Damascus government, killed nearly 1,400 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Israel intervened militarily in support of the Druze, striking Syrian government positions and targeting the defense ministry building in Damascus.
A US-brokered ceasefire on July 18 halted the fighting. Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa later ordered a truce between the Druze and the Bedouin tribes in an attempt to contain the crisis.
Since the Islamist Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), headed by Sharaa, spearheaded a coalition of opposition groups in early December that toppled Assad’s regime, Israel has intensified efforts to destroy Damascus’s military stockpiles.
Israeli forces have also entered a buffer zone east of the annexed Golan Heights, justifying their actions as a security precaution amid Syria’s ongoing political instability.
