Great Rift Valley

FILE - In this Jan. 22, 2016 file photo, Syrian refugee children play outside their family tents in a camp in the town of Saadnayel, in the Bekaa valley, Lebanon. AP Photo/Bilal Hussein

Israel on Apri l14 closed its airspace over Golan Heights in the wake of a U.S.-led airstrike in Syria, according to Israeli media.

Several mortar shells exploded in an open area in the Golan Heights near the border with Syria Saturday afternoon, the army said, quoted by The Times of Israel.There was no damage and no injuries were reported.

An Israeli attack on a Syrian training camp near the Golan Heights killed three members of a pro-government militia on April 23, an official from the forces said.

The Al-Fawwar camp in Syria's southwestern Quneitra province is used by the National Defense Forces (NDF), which command some 90,000 fighters across Syria.

A number of ISIS fighters were killed after exchanging fire in the first direct clashes between Israel and the Islamic State on Sunday in the southern Golan Heights. In the incident, the Shuhada al-Yarmouk organization, which has pledged allegiance to ISIS, exchanged fire with Israeli forces. No soldiers were wounded.

On top of a long-abandoned building, 50 young Arab Israelis listen attentively to Emad Madah as smoke billows into the sky in the distance behind them.
Madah is standing in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights near the demarcation line with Syria, explaining the fighting on the Syrian plains below.

For his guests, this is their idea of fun.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared on April 17 that Israel would never relinquish the Golan Heights, in a signal to Russia and the United States that the strategic plateau should be excluded from any deal on Syria's future. 

A Russian warplane recently entered Israeli-controlled airspace from Syria but the intrusion was resolved without incident, Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said on Nov. 29.

Israel arrested nine Druze Arabs on June 24 over two attacks, one of them fatal, on ambulances bringing casualties from Syria's civil war to Israeli hospitals, security sources said on June 24. 

Two Iranian destroyers, sent to the Gulf of Aden to protect commercial ships, have reached the entrance of Bab el-Mandab, a strategic strait between Yemen and Djibouti, Iran's navy said April 30.