Syria warns Israel on Golan

June 08, 2011 03:20 am | Updated November 17, 2021 05:30 am IST - DAMASCUS

A Syrian government newspaper says marches to the border will continue and warns Israel the day will come when thousands of Syrians will return to their occupied villages.

Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian and Syrian protesters marking the anniversary of the 1967 Six Day War on Sunday, killing as many as 23 people who tried to cross into the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

The Tishreen newspaper said the march was only an “introduction” adding Syrians and Palestinians were now determined to recover their territory through resistance.

It says Israel should not be surprised when 600,000 Syrian refugees march back to their villages and farms from which their families were forcefully uprooted. Israel should expect a march “at any time”, it said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Army said on Monday that 10 people had been killed during Sunday's “Naksa Day” protests along the Syrian ceasefire line, describing Damascus's toll of 23 as “exaggerated”.

Israeli leaders accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad of encouraging the unrest to divert attention from his crackdown on domestic protests, while Damascus accused Israel of “flagrant aggression”.

Sunday's confrontation erupted as hundreds of protesters from Syria marched towards two points along the ceasefire line — Quneitra in no-man's land, and Majdal Shams, the Druze town on the Israeli-occupied side of the plateau.

As they began cutting through a line of barbed wire, troops urged them to stop in Arabic and fired tear gas, then warning shots after which they took aim at the lower body, the military said.

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