Overview
- Exclusive Sky News Arabia footage shows Israeli engineering vehicles digging trenches, raising a roughly five-metre earthen berm and building a supply road along the Sofa 53 line near southern Quneitra while reconnaissance aircraft fly overhead.
- A local Quneitra source says work on the Sofa 53 trench began in 2022 and includes a continuous fortified strip that officials describe as a trench plus the 5-metre berm and an army supply route.
- Residents and the local source report that digging has bulldozed farms and fruit and forest trees and has blocked people from reaching lands located behind the new fortifications.
- The report recalls an incident of pesticide spraying by Israeli forces in February that local sources say damaged crops along fields parallel to the current Golan line.
- Syria’s Foreign Ministry issued a formal condemnation calling the works a clear violation of the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement and UN decisions, and it urged international action while the coverage includes no Israeli official response.