AMMAN: Israeli forces killed four Syrian citizens who were taking part in an anti-Israeli rally on the Syrian side of the occupied Golan Heights border on Sunday, Syrian state television said.
Sixty people on both sides of the frontier were wounded in the incident. The border had been largely quiet since a 1974 U.S.-brokered ceasefire, seven years after Israel occupied the strategic plateau.
President Bashar al-Assad, who is facing pro-democracy demonstrations against his autocratic rule, had been criticized by some protesters for using tanks against his own people rather sending forces to liberate the Golan Heights.
Assad had said the liberation of the Heights is a national goal.
Israeli media reported earlier that Israeli gunfire killed four people after dozens of Palestinian refugees infiltrated the Israeli side of the frontier from Syria during a demonstration to mark what Palestinians call the "Nakba", the catastrophe of Israel's founding in 1948. Israel Radio said one Syrian was killed and three Israelis were wounded in the shooting.
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