Israeli troops on Thursday worked to upgrade security along the cease-fire line with Syria in the Golan Heights, after dozens of Palestinian protesters poured across it on Sunday. Military sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said old mines, some dating from the 1967 Six Day war, were being removed and measures were being taken to reinforce the line.
An AFP photographer saw troops working with mine-detection equipment and laying metres (yards) of new barbed-wire fencing. The sources said the military was considering the possibility of laying new ordnance to replace the decades-old mines strewn across the area, but that no decision had been taken yet. The measures were ordered after dozens of Palestinian protesters from Syria breached Israel's fence line and crossed into the occupied Golan Heights on Sunday.
They were among thousands of Palestinians who gathered in the West Bank, Gaza and on Israel's borders with Lebanon and Syria to protest on the anniversary of Israel's creation in 1948. Palestinians refer to it as the "Nakba," or "catastrophe," because it resulted in some 700,000 people fleeing or being driven out of what is now the Jewish state.
Israeli troops opened fire on protesters trying to breach the line from Syria, killing four. Another 10 protesters were killed along the border with Lebanon, and hundreds were injured in the two incidents. Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it, and the area along the cease-fire line remains dotted with both Israeli and Syrian mines. Protesters who entered the Golan on Sunday crossed through the mined area, but none of the day's injuries or fatalities appeared to have been caused by the ordnance.