Some 70,000 rounds of ammunition and 70 grenades were stolen on Saturday from an Israeli military base in Tznobar, near Katzrin, in the Golan Heights, the part of Syria occupied by Israel since 1967.
«The military ammunition was stolen from a military base in northern Israel. The Military Police Investigation Unit is investigating what happened and the result will be transferred to the Military Prosecution,» explained a military spokesman quoted by ‘The Jerusalem Post’.
The Israeli Army has confirmed the theft and has given the quantities of stolen material: 70,000 bullets of 5.6 millimeter caliber – the one used by the most common Israeli Army rifles -, 70 projectiles of M-203 grenade launchers, a weapon that can be attached under the barrel of an assault rifle.
The Israeli Army has tightened security around the base and opened an internal Military Police investigation. It has also passed the information to the Israeli secret services for the interior and the occupied territories, the Shin Bet.
Sources quoted by the Post warned that the stolen ammunition and weapons could be used by Palestinian «terrorists» in the West Bank. In March, almost a thousand Israeli army bullets were found in the possession of a jihadist group that killed two policemen in an attack in Hadera.
A similar theft occurred last month, when 30,000 bullets were stolen from the arsenal of the Sde Teiman military base in southern Israel. An inventory of the material was ordered and security was tightened at all bases, including the one in the Golan Heights. On previous occasions soldiers or criminal groups have stolen ammunition, vehicles and even missiles.
The Golan Heights is a territory that Israel seized from Syria during the Six Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) and effectively annexed in 1981, an action not recognized by the international community.
