REPORT: Israel arrests Druze suspects in attacks on ambulances

Israel has carried out a "wave of arrests" of Druze Arabs suspected of two attacks, one of them fatal, on ambulances bringing casualties from Syria's civil war to Israeli hospitals, police said on Wednesday.

Monday's attacks in northern Israel and the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights drew strong censure from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government is trying to prevent a spillover of sectarianism from Syria while offering limited humanitarian aid.

Inflamed by media reports suggesting some of the hundreds of wounded Syrians admitted to Israel for medical care belong to jihadi rebel groups fighting the Druze in Syria, the crowds of Druze blocked two army ambulances for inspection.

One ambulance managed to escape with crew and patients unharmed. In the other, a Syrian casualty was killed and another seriously wounded in what Israeli officials described as a lynching. Two troops accompanying them were also injured.

Radical Islamists see the Druze, whose religion is an offshoot of Islam, as apostates to be combated. Druze in Syria and many in the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967, have long been loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

Israeli media said around 10 Druze suspects were arrested on Wednesday in connection with the ambulance attacks. Security forces were reported to be looking into whether information  forces were reported to be probing whether army sources leaked details about the ambulances to the Druze protesters.

The Druze are an important minority in Israel and have influence within the government and the military.

A police spokeswoman said only that there had been a "wave of arrests" within the Druze communities and that a gag order prevented the publication of further details.

Netanyahu's office said in a statement he would convene Druze leaders on Wednesday with a call "to calm tensions and to say to every Druze citizen of Israel to respect soldiers, law and order and not to take the law into their own hands".

Israel has also signaled it would intervene to prevent a massacre of Syrian Druze, with local media suggesting it might offer refugees from the community safe haven on the Golan.

 

 

 

 

For more details, watch the full report in the video above