Amnesty for militants in Syria’s Raqqa aims to promote stability

BEIRUT: Israel said on Saturday it had targeted Syrian military installations after shells landed in the occupied Golan Height but a Syrian military source said the Israeli strikes killed some civilians.

Rebels including hardline Islamist factions fought the Syrian army on Saturday in Quneitra province, bordering the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Syrian state media and a war monitor reported.

Israel’s military said 10 projectiles from inside Syria had hit Israel and it responded with an air strike on the position they were launched from, while the Israeli army targeted two Syrian army tanks.

In an earlier statement, the Israeli military described the shellfire into Israel as errant fire but it later called it an "unacceptable breach" of sovereignty.

The Syrian military source said Israeli rocket fire had hit a residential building, causing a number of deaths and damage.

The source did not mention Syrian fire into Israel and said the Israeli strike was in support of rebels.

The war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said rebel groups in Quneitra had launched an assault and were storming army positions near Baath City.

Israel has targeted Syria several times during the conflict, sometimes after projectiles have landed in the Golan Heights, but also to hit weapons supplies of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, which is fighting alongside the Syrian government.

Syria’s civil war, between President Bashar al-Assad and rebels seeking to oust him, has lasted six years, killed hundreds of thousands and pushed millions to flee their homes.

Meanwhile, a civil council expected to rule Raqqa once Islamic State is dislodged from the Syrian city pardoned 83 of the jihadist group’s low-ranking militants on Saturday, a goodwill gesture designed to promote stability.

The US -backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have gained significant ground in the battle for Raqqa, the operational base for Islamic State over the past three years and a symbol of its self-proclaimed caliphate.

Senior SDF figures predict Raqqa could fall within months.

That would be a severe blow to Islamic State, which has plotted shooting and bomb attacks around the world from Raqqa, a city of about 300,000 before the militants seized it.

The 83 Islamic State prisoners were transported to the headquarters of the Raqqa City Council in the village of Ain Issa, north of Raqqa, in an amnesty coinciding with the Eid-ul-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramazan.

One by one, they stepped down from buses, the youngest 14 years old. Leila Mustafa, co-leader of the council, read out a speech as the militants, released because they had no blood on their hands and held no senior posts, stood silently in neat lines.

Sweets were handed out on trays in the sweltering heat, in what officials hoped would be the start of a new chapter in the men’s lives.