Druse brothers killed by IAF had moved from Israel to Syria
By YASSER OKBI/ MAARIV HASHAVUA/J.Post/04/27/2015
The four terrorists who the Israel Air Force killed on Sunday after crossing into Israel from Syria and planting explosives were Druse from the village of Hader in Syria and they may have been members of Hezbollah according to media reports.
Two of the deceased terrorists, the brothers Tair (23) and Venzia (33) Mahmoud, were the sons of Mustapha Mahmoud, who is known to security forces in Israel and was a security prisoner in Israel before returning to Syria where he later died. The Mahmoud family moved from the Golan Heights village of Majdal Shams to Syria in the nineties. The two other terrorists in the operation were named as Youssef Jaber Hason and Samiha Abdallah Badria also from the village of Hader. It was reported that the four were on a “mission of bravery” when the IAF struck and killed them. One Lebanese media report quoted a source close to Hezbollah as saying that the four belonged to the Hezbollah group known as the Martyrs of Quneitra. A separate report said that Hezbollah established the group of four men and trained it for its mission.
The UK’s Sky News in Arabic also reported that the four men were Hezbollah members. Thousands arrived to pay their condolences at the home of Sheikh Mustapha Mahmoud in Majdal Shams on Monday whose two grandsons were killed in the IAF strike. The brothers’ uncle Afif told Radio Al-Shams that they received information that their relatives were killed. He said that Israel told the family to collect the brothers’ bodies, but that the authorities did not provide further details. “We understood that they went to carry out a mission and did not return home,” he said.
“The bodies are on Syrian land. They should have directed their fire in the air and not at the men,” he added. An Israeli military source on Sunday stressed that although the terrorists infiltrated into Israel, they did not cross the 110-km. border fence, which is within Israeli territory.
