The United Nations launched a new push on Tuesday to stabilise Libya by getting rival factions to revise a stalled peace plan and set the country on the path to elections, like reported by reuters.com.

The effort aims to end the turmoil that developed in Libya after a 2011 NATO-backed uprising ended Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule, giving space to Islamist militants and smuggling networks that have sent hundreds of thousands of migrants to Europe.

Political and military splits have left the North African country mired in conflict and the OPEC member’s economy in freefall. Rival parliaments and governments have vied for power.

Last week, U.N. envoy Ghassan Salame announced a one-year “action plan” for a transition towards presidential and parliamentary elections.

The plan got underway on Tuesday with negotiations between delegations from rival parliaments from eastern Libya and Tripoli, which are meant to draw up amendments to a previous U.N.-mediated plan signed in December 2015.

As the delegations convened in Tunis, Salame urged them to set aside their differences and complete their work in a timely fashion.

“All Libyans are fed up. They are going from transition to transition with no horizon,” he said.

“We have sleeping institutions that need to be awoken, divided institutions that need to be united, and hijacked institutions that need to be rebuilt.”

The 2015 deal had only had limited support from power-brokers on the ground and was never endorsed by factions aligned with powerful military commander Khalifa Haftar that control eastern Libya.

A U.N.-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli has been hamstrung by internal splits and has been unable to halt a slide in living standards or tame the power of armed groups.

“We’re here to move the political process forward for the sake of the country’s stability,” said Moussa Faraj, head of the delegation from the High Council of State in Tripoli, according to a tweet from the United Nations from the meeting which got closed to the press after Salame’s speech.

Under the new U.N. plan, once amendments have been agreed a national conference drawing on a much larger number of representatives from across Libya is meant to select the members of a transitional government that would run the country until elections.

The eastern parliament, or House of Representatives (HOR), is expected to devise laws for national elections and for a referendum to approve a much-delayed constitution. The chamber has barely functioned over the past two years and has been boycotted by a large number of its members.

“Our task is difficult,” said Abdusalam Nasia, head of the HOR delegation, according to the United Nations. “I call on all to leave personal interests behind and focus on common interests.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rnG-vXUf6k

Italian television programme Matrix has shown footage of what they claim is of members of the pro-migrant rescue NGO Save the Children cooperating with people traffickers, like reported by breitbart.com.

The television programme, which is hosted on Italian network Canale 5, released the footage which shows what they claim are people smugglers helping a large wooden boat of migrants get to the ship chartered by Save the Children, the Vos Hestia, off the coast of Libya.

The migrants on the boat appear to be clearly Sub-Saharan African, contrasted by the alleged people smugglers who appear to be North African or Arabic. The footage shows one of the men of North African appearance physically beating the individuals on the boat before they are taken to the NGO vessel.

The footage is similar to a case brought against the German NGO Jugend Rettet by the Italian government who are investigating the group for alleged connections to people traffickers. The Italians confiscated their vessel, the Iuventa, in August.

The Italian authorities later released pictures which they claimed was evidence of the NGO workers working with the people smugglers.

The Trapani prosecutor’s office has confirmed it is investigating Marco Amato, commander of the Vos Hestia, for people smuggling, according to Italian newspaper Giornale Di Sicilia.

Save the Children is one of the few migrant rescue NGOs to continue operations after the Libyan coastguard began confronting other vessels, and the Italian government introduced a stricter code of conduct on NGO ships in exchange for permission to use Italian ports.

Whilst many have credited the Italians and the Libyans for greatly reducing the flow of migrants from Libya and North Africa, others have claimed that the real reason the flow of individuals has stopped is due to the Italians paying off former people smugglers.

Some have alleged that Libyan warlord Ahmed Dabaschi, also known as “al-Ammu” (“the uncle”) and his militia in the Libyan port city of Sabratha has been receiving money from the Italians to prevent boats from leaving the country.

The US military launched six drone strikes against Islamic State positions in Libya, months after militants were driven from safe havens there, like reported by theage.com.au.

Officials announced the operation on Sunday, saying 17 militants had been killed and three vehicles destroyed when unmanned aircraft targeted a desert camp about 240 kms south-east of Sirte, a coastal city where ISIS fighters were defeated by US-backed Libyan forces last September.

Sirte served as an important logistics and planning hub for ISIS leaders, and it was considered a potential fallback if the terror group were to lose its de facto capital in Syria.

The attack on Friday comes as President Donald Trump seeks to further relax restrictions on attacking terrorists outside active war zones. Since assuming office in January, his administration has sought to roll back Obama-era regulations restricting strikes that put civilians at risk or where there is no “continued and imminent threat” to US personnel.

The operation was the first reported US strike inside Libya since late-January, when an estimated 80 ISIS militants were killed 50 kms from the Mediterranean coast.

In a statement, US Africa Command said ISIS militants strategically capture ungoverned territory to recruit and plot attacks, including in Europe. Army Major Audricia Harris, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the strikes were carried out by unmanned aircraft but would not say which model. MQ-9 Reaper drones have been used for similar strikes in Libya.

The Pentagon maintains a small presence in Libya, mostly special operations troops and joint terminal attack controllers who can direct airstrikes from the ground. The US often relies on Libyan government troops to pass on coordinates.

Libya has been engulfed in conflict since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi’s regime in 2011. US forces began targeting ISIS there in early 2016, when the militant group had upwards of 6000 fighters spread throughout Sirte and surrounding areas. By this spring, officials estimated only 200 or so remained in Libya.

In the January attack, one of the last conducted during the Obama administration, two B-2 bombers and an unspecified number of Reaper aircraft unleashed nearly 100 weapons on ISIS training camps south-west of Sirte. At the time, US officials declared the operation a potent blow to the Islamic State’s dwindling presence in the region.

Claudia Gazzini, senior Libya analyst for the International Crisis Group, said the recent strikes did not indicate ISIS militants had regained strength, but confirmed assessments that scattered militants were capable of massing to strike forces in a 160 km to 240 km bubble to Sirte’s south and east.

Though the location of the camps was not released, Gazzini said it is in the rough geographic area of Al Fuqaha, where ISIS militants attacked a Libyan National Army checkpoint and beaded nine soldiers and two civilians in August, Newsweek reported. ISIS militants attacked a town east of Sirte this month and conducted services at a mosque there, Gazzini said.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was in London on September 14 to discuss simmering conflicts, including Libya, though Gazzini said it appears the US will continue to deal with violence in the country from the air.

“This strike seems to indicate Libya is mainly an anti-terrorism file and only subsequently a political file” for the US government, she said.

Hamas has suffered another embarrassment after three of its members purportedly successfully infiltrated the Sinai Peninsula on Wednesday and joined Wilyat Sinai, the Egyptian branch of the Islamic State, like reported by breitbart.com.

This just days after a Hamas delegation led by the organization’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, returned from a visit to Egypt where one of the main topics of discussion with Egyptian officials was security arrangementz on the border between Sinai and Gaza and the need to prevent jihadist infiltration from the Strip into Sinai.

A senior jihadist allied with Islamic State ideology in the Gaza Strip, Abou Baker al-Maqdesi, told Breitbart Jerusalem that three members of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ so-called military wing, managed to infiltrate Sinai on Wednesday through the tunnels that cross from Gaza into Egypt, where they joined the ranks of IS, whose fighters are engaged in long campaign in recent years against the Egyptian army, a campaign which, just last week, claimed the lives of 18 Egyptian soldiers and policemen at the hands of IS fighters.

According to al-Maqdesi, “Despite the war being waged by the traitors of Hamas and the infidels of (Egyptian President Abdel Fattah) Sisi against our mujahedeen from both sides of the border, our brothers are successfully breaking the lines of Allah’s enemies and joining the mujahedeen in Wilyat Sinai.”

Al-Maqdesi said the three were residents of the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza and that they managed to pass through one of the tunnels that remains open despite the war being waged by the Egyptian army against the tunnels between the two sides of the border and despite the campaign being waged by Hamas against terror tunnels that do not serve its own members.

According to al-Maqdesi, two of the infiltrators were members of Hamas’ elite commando unit, whose members were meant to carry out attacks inside the Israeli home front during a future confrontation with Israel. The third infiltrator belonged to Hamas’ border guards, whose job is to prevent rocket fire at Israel and the infiltration of jihadists from Gaza to Sinai.

Last week, Breitbart Jerusalem reported that Hamas managed to prevent an attack planned by jihadist supporters of IS against Hamas security forces in the border area. As part of the attack, the jihadists planned to infiltrate Sinai to join the ranks of IS there.

Earlier this month, IS threatened Hamas and Egypt, saying that if they continued in their efforts against the mujahedeen, the terrorist organization would be forced to respond with unprecedented force. The organization claimed that Hamas is increasing its cooperation with Egyptian intelligence against the jihadists in order to please Israel and the U.S.

Although IS and Hamas are both terrorist groups, IS accuses Hamas of selling out by also becoming a political party and running in elections. It further disapproves of Hamas because of the relationship between Gaza’s Islamist rulers and Egypt, which IS considers an apostate country.

A powerful armed group, known for smuggling people from Libya, is seeking legitimacy and state security jobs from the Tripoli government in exchange for stopping migrant boats from leaving the coast of Sabratha for Italy, a senior group member said, according to euractiv.com.

The group, the Anas al-Dabbashi brigade, struck a deal with Libya’s United Nations-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) this summer to clamp down on trafficking, the senior brigade member, who gave his name as Mohamed, told Reuters.

The need for the GNA to strike such a deal would illustrate the power of armed groups in western Libya, which continue to hold the real influence locally as they have since a 2011 uprising that ousted Muammar Gaddafi.

The revelation would also throw light on the fragility of the sharp recent reduction in migrant arrivals from Italy, which took over from the Aegean route as the main focus of European concerns in the crisis.

The GNA did not respond to requests for comment.

Local sources, who declined to be named, said there had been at least one meeting between government officials and Ahmed al-Dabbashi, identified as one of the main “facilitators” of human smuggling in Libya in a UN report earlier this year.

Mohamed said there had been a number of such meetings, and that the brigade was also offered the possibility of an amnesty for past smuggling activity.

To show it could uphold the deal with Tripoli, the several-hundred-strong brigade has cracked down on departures with the help of the coastguard leading to an 80% fall in the arrival of rescued migrants in Italy last month, Mohamed said.

With a national election looming in the first half of next year, the government in Rome, which welcomed the sudden decline shown in official data, is under pressure to show it can stop, or at least slow, migration from the oil-producing desert state.

Libya remains split between rival political camps and armed alliances. The GNA has struggled to impose its authority on Tripoli and other parts of western Libya, and has been rejected by factions that control the east of the country.

Like normal police

Mohamed said the GNA, under pressure from Italy to halt the migrant flows, had exerted pressure on the Dabbashi brigade. The GNA “said that they would gather all the cities west of Tripoli against us, and they would come and fight us”.

“On the other hand, they have offered to let us join the police, and let us join the military,” Mohamed said. “If this plan goes forward and the (Tripoli) government was telling the truth … in six months time everybody in this battalion will be like normal police.”

A second source in Sabratha spoke to Ahmed al-Dabbashi, who confirmed that Mohamed was a member of the brigade. It is the first time a brigade member has spoken at length about why the group suddenly shifted from smuggling to policing, a change first reported by Reuters last month.

Some international media reported that Dabbashi had received €5m directly from Italy’s secret services to stop the migrant boats, but Mohamed denied this. Italy has also denied any direct payments to armed groups.

The fragility of the security situation in Sabratha was underscored by territorial clashes that erupted there over the weekend, with Dabbashi’s group battling cross-town rivals in some of the heaviest fighting the city has seen in recent years.

Explosions could be heard as far away as the port of Zawiya, 22 km away.

Both sides in the fighting claim to have the backing of the Tripoli government, and both battled together to drive Islamic State forces out of the area last year.

“Little bit smart”

With Italy and the EU offering millions of euros to local authorities in Libya who can put a cap on trafficking, armed groups have an interest in proving that they are the only ones who can police the territory.

“This smuggling thing – everybody knows that Libya is not going to be like this forever,” Mohamed said. “If you are just a little bit smart, you will go with the government.”

As a result of the policing by Dabbashi and coastguard interceptions, arrivals of rescued migrants in Italy fell 50% in July from a year earlier, and declined more than 80% in August – two months that had been peak periods during the previous three years.

Overall, there have been more than 100,000 arrivals in Italy this year, a decline of more than 20% compared to 2016, official Italian data show.

To rein in smuggling, Italy has spearheaded efforts to bolster the Libyan coast guard, and it is dealing directly with local governments to try to offer incentives for them to shut it down, including with Sabratha’s mayor, Hussein al-Thwadi.

Forgiveness on the table

Thwadi sought support directly from Italy, meeting the ambassador earlier this month and Interior Minister Marco Minniti in July.

The Dabbashi brigade, which also guards an oil and gas facility west of Sabratha run jointly by Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) and Italian firm Eni, denied any direct contacts with Italy. It is allied to Brigade 48, a group of some 300 soldiers aligned with the GNA.

“We only have deals with the (Tripoli) government,” Mohamed said. “They said they might forgive all of what we have done in the past,” he added, referring to people smuggling.

But it is unclear if Tripoli can deliver on its promises to integrate Dabbashi’s men, or whether any group can hold the line against forces who want to keep smuggling.

On Saturday, Libyan coastguard officials said they had turned back more than 1,000 migrants travelling in at least eight boats. On the same day, the Dabbashi brigade intercepted about 3,000 more, said Mohamed. More than 1,500 were rescued at sea and brought to Italy.

“A lot of people are pressuring us to stop this,” Mohamed said of Dabbashi’s crackdown on departing migrant boats. “They want to start (human trafficking) again.”

Hezbollah has more than 10,000 fighters in southern Syria ready to confront Israel, a commander for the Iranian-backed Lebanese terror group has said, according to toi.com.

“Hezbollah has over 10,000 fighters deployed in southern Syria. Hezbollah is an army of infantry, rockets, tanks, elite forces,” the Hezbollah officialtold the Middle East Eye this week, amid tensions surrounding the shooting down by the Israeli Air Force on Tuesday of an Iranian-built drone launched by the group as it attempted to cross into airspace.

The commander said the fighters were based in areas surrounding the Golan Heights and that tunnels and military bases were being built for a possible confrontation with Israel

“We are operating as we do in south Lebanon, but of course in a veiled manner,” he said.

Speaking of the truce in southern Syria, under the auspices of Russia and the United Nations, the commander said that the “de-escalation plan is better for us. We are working with more freedom, there are no more bombings.”

The commander said that the next war with Israel may start from Syria but “what really matters is where will it end, will it be in Netanya, Haifa or Kiryat Shmona?”

On Tuesday, Israel used a Patriot missile to shoot down the drone launched by Hezbollah and scrambled fighter jets to the area where the device was set to cross into Israeli airspace, but ultimately did not need to use them as the interceptor missile was able to destroy the target.

The Patriot interceptor missile was launched from a military installation in northern Israel, near the city of Safed.

After the drone breached the “Bravo line” that marks the Syrian border and entered the demilitarized zone — but not Israeli airspace — the IDF “decided to intercept it,” army spokesperson Lt. Col. Yonatan Conricus said Tuesday.

In a statement, the IDF said it “will not allow any infiltration or approach toward the Golan Heights area by terrorist figures from Iranian forces, Hezbollah, Shiite militias or Islamic Jihad.”

According to Conricus, the air force monitored the unmanned aerial vehicle from its take-off at Damascus airport to the demilitarized zone that separates the Israeli and Syrian Golan Heights.

“We monitor everything that flies toward the State of Israel and follow it closely for any potential threat,” he said.

Conricus said Military Intelligence was able to identify the drone as Iranian-built and Hezbollah-launched based on the army’s arrays of sensors in the area and its years of experience monitoring the group.

The spokesperson said the drone appeared to be performing reconnaissance mission in the area. It was not immediately clear if the drone was armed.

Shortly after the incident, Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman warned that any country or terrorist group that threatens Israel will “pay a dear price, very dear.”

The debris from the drone landed near the Syrian city of Quneitra so the IDF was not able to recover it, he said.

The Patriot missile system was designed by the United States to intercept incoming missiles and aircraft. It has been deployed in Israel since the 1990s, but first saw anti-aircraft combat during the 2014 Gaza war, when a battery shot down an unmanned Hamas aircraft over the port of Ashdod.

Israel has long been concerned by its nemesis Iran’s ongoing efforts to establish itself in southern Syria, near the Golan Heights.

Jerusalem fears that the Iranian presence in that area would serve as a springboard for terrorist groups to attack Israel in the future.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has reportedly been negotiating with his counterparts in the United States and Russia to establish an Iran-free area around surrounding the border, but to no avail yet.

Earlier this month, tens of thousands of Israeli soldiers participated in the largest military drill since 1998, simulating war with Hezbollah for 10 days.

The exercised was named “Or HaDagan” after Meir Dagan, a former Mossad chief and IDF general who died last year.

Israel last fought a full-scare war with Hezbollah in 2006’s Second Lebanon War, and tensions have remained high even as the northern border has remained relatively quiet since.

This exercise was touted as a chance to practice failures or military shortcomings exposed during the war.

Led by Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah is believed to have an arsenal of between 100,000 and 150,000 short-, medium- and long-range missiles and a fighting force of some 50,000 soldiers, including reservists.

While Israeli military officers often discuss a future conflict with the terrorist group as a matter of “when, not if,” the assessment of the IDF is that Hezbollah is not currently interested in renewed warfare with Israel at present, due to its active involvement in the Syrian civil war, which have caused it significant strategic problems.

With President Bashar Assad seemingly poised to survive the Syrian civil war, Israeli leaders are growing nervous about the intentions of his Iranian patrons and their emerging corridor of influence across the region, like reported by toi.com.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is agitating against Iran in global forums such as this week’s UN General Assembly.

The Israeli military is holding war games targeting the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah, and generals are issuing tough threats in hopes of avoiding what could be another ruinous Israeli entanglement in Lebanon, this time with Iranian advisers and troops on Israel’s doorstep.

Israel has long identified Iran as its biggest threat, citing its suspect nuclear program, development of long-range missiles and hostile rhetoric. But gains by Syrian troops and their Iranian-backed allies have given those concerns new urgency.

Israel fears the establishment of a Shiite “corridor,” with land links from Iran to Lebanon, allowing the movement of fighters and weapons across the region.

At the heart of those fears is Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that battled Israel to a stalemate in a month-long war in 2006. The group has greatly beefed up its arsenal of rockets and missiles since then, and after years of fighting in Syria, is more battle-tested than ever.

In his UN address Tuesday, Netanyahu warned that Iran was spreading a “curtain of tyranny and terror” across the region, and said Israel would defend itself.

“We will act to prevent Iran from establishing permanent military bases in Syria for its air, sea and ground forces. We will act to prevent Iran from producing deadly weapons in Syria or in Lebanon for use against us. And we will act to prevent Iran from opening new terror fronts against Israel along our northern border,” he said.

Israel last week wrapped up its largest military exercise in two decades — mobilizing some 30,000 troops to train for the next war against Hezbollah.

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, the commander of the exercise, Maj. Gen. Tamir Hayman, said that despite Hezbollah’s gains, the balance of power has greatly shifted in favor of Israel since 2006.

“If Hezbollah’s capabilities have grown linearly, ours have grown exponentially, in intelligence, in targets and in the ability to attack,” he said. If fighting resumes, “the damage to Hezbollah will be severe, mortal and comprehensive.”

He said he was pleased with the performance of his troops, and said the two-week drill should send a powerful message of deterrence.

“We have no intentions at this time to go out and defeat Hezbollah. Our goal is to maintain the quiet and stability in the north,” said Hayman, the commander of the army’s Northern Corps.

Israeli forces on Tuesday shot down what Israel said was a Hezbollah surveillance drone that veered too close to the Syrian border with Israel. The military said the unmanned aircraft was Iranian-made and launched from a Damascus airport before it was shot down near the Israeli-controlled side of the Golan Heights.

After six years of fighting that claimed at least 400,000 lives, Assad’s forces appear to have finally gained the upper hand as they recapture territory from the Islamic State group and opposition fighters.

Russia, which is waging an air campaign on behalf of Assad, and Iran and Hezbollah, which have fighters on the ground, have provided crucial support and are expected to play a major role in postwar Syria.

“The vector is quite clear right now, with the Syrian army, Hezbollah and the Shiite militias gradually regaining control of large swaths of the country,” said Chagai Tzuriel, the director general of the Intelligence Ministry.

Israel has said any permanent presence of Iranian or Hezbollah troops along the Syrian border with Israel would be crossing a “red line,” hinting that it would be willing to take military action if needed. Tzuriel warned of a “regional conflagration.”

He said Russia could end up playing a positive role, because it wants to stabilize Syria. He said the Russians realize that Iran could create friction not only with Israel, but also with the Sunni majority in the region.

“I think there is a good chance that it will limit and restrain Iran, Hezbollah and the Shiite militias,” he said.

But that is far from clear. Netanyahu last month flew to Russia to discuss Syria with President Vladimir Putin, but apparently returned home emptyhanded.

Israeli media last week said Russia had rejected an Israeli request to keep the Shiite forces at least 60 kilometers (40 miles) from the border.

Intelligence Minister Yisrael Katz recently claimed at a security conference that Iran and Syria are working on an agreement that could bring an Iranian naval base, airport or army bases to Israel’s doorstep, a major boost for Hezbollah.

“The Iranians may bring different kinds of missiles to Syria, and a large and well-equipped force of Shiite militias may settle there, including tens of thousands of Afghans, Pakistanis, Iraqis and Syrians whose goal is to threaten and battle Israel,” Katz said. “Hezbollah will train and command the Shiite militias.”

Israel has attempted to stay on the sidelines throughout the Syrian war. But it has admitted to carrying out dozens of airstrikes on what are believed to be shipments of “game changing” weapons, such as guided missiles or anti-aircraft systems, bound for Hezbollah.

Syria accused Israel of carrying out a recent airstrike against a Syrian military facility, possibly linked to either missile production or chemical weapons.

Hayman said last week’s drill was only focused on Lebanon, and that Israel would try to keep any future fighting from spreading beyond Lebanon.

After years of fighting in Syria, Hezbollah does not appear to be in a rush to battle Israel. The group has lost an estimated 1,500 fighters in Syria and is also suffering from low morale and financial pressure.

But as it withdraws from Syria, it is expected to look south, to its main nemesis.

“Hezbollah now has a force similar to those of a conventional army without losing its experience in guerrilla warfare,” said Qassim Qassir, a Lebanese expert on Hezbollah. “Hezbollah today is stronger than before and this is what made Israel carry out this drill to show their force.”

Five killed and more than ten wounded in the clashes between two battalions in the city of Sabratha, 60 Km west of Tripoli, like reported by libyaprospect.com.

The clashes started between the Battalion “48” affiliated with Foreign Ministry of the Government of National Accord (GNA) and the Operations Chamber to fight Daesh in Sabratha after mutual accusations; each side accused the other of starting the shooting.

The military source from Sabratha said that the clashes started when the Battalion “48” prevented smuggling more than 1000 illegal migrants through Sabratha’s coast on eight boats.

The source stated that they had discovered that the Operations Chamber employs an army officer affiliated with the Dignity Operation under the leadership of General Khalifa Haftar and others affiliated with MadKhali Salafist group. The source added that the Operation Chamber who should fight Daesh are involved in smuggling illegal migrants.

The source said that the chamber tried to help Haftar by putting pressure on the Italian authorities to deal with Haftar as a high side in the negotiations to fight the illegal migration.

The intermediating efforts of different sides in Libya, including the Military Chief of Staff affiliated with GNA and notables from the western side of Libya, failed to stop the clashes in the city center of Sabratha.

The Israel Defense Forces fired a Patriot missile to intercept a drone operated by Hezbollah in Lebanon, like reported by jta.org.

The drone,  which the IDF identified as an Iranian-made unmanned aerial vehicle, took off from the airport in Damascus on an intelligence-gathering mission, according to the IDF. The drone operated in the demilitarized zone between Israel and Syria on the Golan Heights and did not enter Israeli airspace, the IDF said.

It was shot down with one Patriot missile.

“We will not allow any infiltration or infiltration of Iranian terrorist elements, Hezbollah, Shiite militias and global jihad into the border area on the Golan Heights,” said IDF Spokesman Ronen Manlis in a statement. “We will respond to every action very clearly and we will act to prevent any such attempts.”

In April,  the IDF used a Patriot missile to intercept a Syrian drone that flew into Israeli airspace.  The IDF used two Patriot missiles last summer to fire on a drone sent from Syria that breached Israel’s air space.

The army is preparing to redeploy military units that took part in Operation Fajr al-Juroud to the vicinity of the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain el-Hilweh, a media report said according to naharnet.com.

Describing the camp as an “unrest hub,” military sources told Saudi daily Asharq al-Awsat that the situation in the camp is different than the one that was prevalent on the eastern border “due to the presence of civilians.”

Any decision to act against extremist groups present in the camp “requires coordination and cooperation with the Palestinian factions, but we are always ready for any confrontation and we will immediately tackle any suspicious move,” the sources said.

The report follows an announcement by the army about the arrest of a 19-member cell led by Egyptian Islamic State militant Fadi Ibrahim Ahmed, aka Abu Khattab, who is hiding in Ain el-Hilweh.

The cell had been “plotting an act of terror,” the army said.