Israeli military forces engaged in multiple new operations in and around the town of al-Rafid in Quneitra Governorate, in southwest Syria, with the latest operations centering around them infiltrating the town and detaining a number of farmers and shepherds, questioning them, and ultimately releasing them.
Details are scant about what the troops were aiming to accomplish in these operations, though shepherds seem to be an increasingly common target of such raids. No one was “arrested” by the Israeli forces ultimately, however, unlike some previous incidents.
Al-Rafid was also the site of a report yesterday, in which Israeli troops established a new checkpoint in the area between the town and the nearby farms, a checkpoint that is limiting farmers’ access to those areas reportedly.
IDF troops operating in Quneitra Governorate | Image from SOHR
Yesterday marked a considerable further escalation in Quneitra and Daraa Governorates, with a lot of different Israeli ground operations and drones seen overhead, with the drones continuing into Thursday, though the only Thursday ground operation reported was in al-Rafid.
During yesterday’s operations, Israeli forces also fired heavy machine guns in the Wadi al-Raqqad area, near the Daraa-Quneitra boundary. It’s unclear who was being fired upon, and no casualties were reported in the incident.
That has been a recurring problem, with Israeli operations in Syria rarely resulting in an official statement by the IDF, and subsequently remaining very opaque. Much of the operations seems to be centering on al-Rafid in Quneitra, and the Yarmouk Basin in Daraa, but in both cases what they hope to accomplish remains a mystery.
