Hezbollah Troops Fast Approaching Israeli Border From Syrian Side

Juan Bernal/iStock/Thinkstock(JERUSALEM) — Bolstered by the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah and its patrons in Tehran, the Syrian Army continued its rapid advance into southern Syria Thursday, inching closer to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

“Regime troops and their Hezbollah-led allies are advancing in the area linking Daraa, Quneitra and Damascus provinces,” close to the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Beginning earlier this week, the Syrian government confirmed they launched a “broad operation” to recapture strategic hilltops and key swaths of territory lost last year to rebel groups including the al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, al-Nusra Front.

Syrian State television reported the offensive swiftly gained control of the town of Deir al-Adas and the village of Deir Maker and Tal al-Arous and Tal al-Sarjeh.

But rebels told ABC News the battles are ongoing, and ABC News was unable to independently confirm the captured towns.

“The Free Syrian Army is still making notable advances across the border with Jordan into Southern Syria. The battle for Deir Addas is not over. We have reports of over 30 Iranian Lebanese Hezbollah and Afghan Shia foreign fighters captured by rebels in the Southern front this week,” Oubai Shahbandar, former Senior Advisor to the Syrian National Coalition, told ABC News.

“The Iranian revolutionary guards have taken operational control of Assad’s forces south of Damascus because they have little trust in the competency of what’s left of Assad’s military in the southern front following a string of defeats since January,” Shahbandar explained to ABC News.

This week’s southern offensive comes on the heels of a deadly week; the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says airstrikes to the south and east of the capital have killed nearly 200 people in the last ten days alone.

But by Thursday afternoon, the Observatory said military operations were more “limited” than earlier this week due to bad weather.

The pressure on Israel’s northern border comes just two weeks after a Hezbollah strike on an Israeli convoy in the Shebaa Farms area, killing two soldiers and wounding at least seven others. The strike was in retaliation for a presumed Israeli attack on a Hezbollah convoy in Quneitra, Syria, near the border last month. The strike, which Israel never officially claimed, killed an Iranian general and six Hezbollah commanders, including Jihad Mughniyeh, the son of one of Hezbollah’s most prominent military commanders believed to have been assassinated by Israel. Neither Hezbollah nor Israel escalated the border fire, but analysts say renewed fighting near the border heightens the risk of opening a broader confrontation.

According to the Observatory, the Lebanese Shii’ite militant group is currently leading the charge in southern Syria and has deployed at least 5,000 fighters to serve alongside Syrian government forces. Peter Lerner, spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces, puts that number somewhere between “3,000 to 5,000.”

The new offensive “should not be a surprise,” Lerner told ABC News, “as Hezbollah are an integral component of the regime’s war effort.”

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