Israel’s army accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime of “organising” Sunday’s violence on the Golan Heights as a way to divert attention from pro-democracy protests sweeping his country. “The Syrian authorities organised this violent incident in order to divert world opinion away from what is happening in their cities,” army spokeswoman Avital Leibovitz told AFP. Israeli troops wounded “dozens” of people when they opened fire at protesters from Syria forcing their way onto the disputed Golan Heights on Sunday, the military said. The army said soldiers opened fire when “thousands of Syrian civilians breached the Israel-Syria border near the Israeli village of Majdal Shams.” But Leibovitz later clarified that although there were thousands of protesters, only dozens had managed to cross the frontier, in an incident she described as “very serious and violent.” “Thousands of protesters from the Syrian side of the border attacked our troops with stones and dozens of them entered into Israel,” she said, toning down an army statement that “thousands” had crossed.
