Israeli military kidnaps four children from Syria’s Quneitra

Israeli forces have abducted four children from the countryside of Syria’s Quneitra province amid ongoing incursions into the country’s southwest.

According to Syrian state news agency  SANA, three of the children were seized from the village of al-Ashah and another from the nearby village of al-Asbah, in southern Quneitra.

The four were reportedly kidnapped by Israeli soldiers while grazing sheep near the Tal Ahmar base, a military facility established after Israel occupied the strategic hill, journalist Nour al-Hassan told The New Arab.

Al-Hassan added that the children were taken to an Israeli military site. Israel has not released a statement or provided any explanation for the arrests.

The abductions coincided with an incursion involving ten Israeli military vehicles entering the town of Bir Ajam in Quneitra’s central countryside on Sunday morning.

At least five additional military vehicles were seen in the Wadi al-Raqad area near the village of Jamla in western Daraa province, with Israel reinforcing its positions in the area.

Since the fall of longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, Israel has made regular incursions into Syrian territory beyond the occupied Golan Heights, which it occupied in 1967.

It has unilaterally claimed that a 1974 UN-brokered disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel, which established a buffer zone, is no longer operational. , strengthening existing Israeli positions within the occupied Golan Heights, which it occupied in 1967.

Israel has set up checkpoints in Quneitra and Daraa provinces and detained dozens of Syrians, some of whom have ended up in notorious detention centres such as Sde Teiman, where Palestinians are abused and tortured by Israeli guards.