A new Israeli raid on a Syrian army position in the Golan Heights killed at least five people Friday, Syrian state television reported, describing the victims as unarmed civilians. The car was in a village near Qunaitra on the border, but state TV gave no further details. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based activist group monitoring the war, said the strike killed two pro-government militiamen traveling in a car. However, according to an Israeli defense official, the strike killed at least four Palestinian militants responsible for Thursday's rocket fire on an Israeli village. "We know of at least four of them who were killed," the official said in a statement. Israel's Maariv newspaper said the Israeli strike may have killed five Islamic Jihad militants. It followed more than a dozen Israeli raids on Syrian army positions in the Golan Heights Thursday, which killed at least one person, in response to cross-border rocket fire. Responding to the earlier attacks, a Syrian army source, quoted by SANA said: "The enemy aircraft struck a military position in the area of Quneitra at 11:30 pm (2030 GMT Thursday), martyring one and wounding seven soldiers." The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based activist group that relies on a network of sources in the war-torn country, said two soldiers had been killed and eight wounded in the earlier strikes. The Israeli military Thursday reported four rockets from Syria hitting the Galilee region of northern Israel and the occupied Golan, in attacks that did not cause any casualties. There was no claim of responsibility but Israel blamed the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad which it said was backed by Iran. Israel carried out strikes on 14 Syrian army positions in the Golan Heights Thursday night in response to rocket fire. "The Israel Defence Forces targeted 14 Syrian military posts in the Syrian Golan Heights," the Israeli army said in a statement early Friday, without elaborating. Previous border fire has frequently been attributed to spillover from fighting inside Syria and to Islamist rebels holding ground close to the Israeli-held sector of the strategic plateau. But Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said the latest barrage was launched from positions under the control of President Bashar Assad's forces. "The fire was carried out from territory controlled by the Assad regime, which allows terrorist activity against Israel and which we hold as also responsible," he said in a statement Thursday night. He said the actual assault was "carried out by a terrorist cell of Islamic Jihad, operated, funded and armed by Iran." Iran is one of Assad's strongest backers and a sponsor of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The militant group has its headquarters in Damascus. Israel's foreign ministry said Friday that the Islamic Jihad force which carried out Thursday's fire was under the operational command of an officer of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. "We have credible information that the attack was carried out by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organisation and was facilitated and directed by an Iranian operative, Saaed Izaadhi," ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said in a statement. He said that Izaadhi heads a Palestinian unit in the Revolutionary Guards' elite Quds Force. Israel seized 1,200 square kilometers (460 square miles) of the Golan from neighboring Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it 14 years later, in a move never recognized by the international community.
