'Israel' base in occupied Golan broken into, arms, munition missing

• 

The Israeli occupation forces, in cooperation with the occupation's police and the general security services, are investigating the disappearance of more than 70,000 bullets and 70 grenades from "Tel Aviv's" military base in the occupied Syrian Golan, Israeli media reported on Saturday.

"Unknown individuals broke last night into the Tznobar military base in the Golan Heights and stole a large number of weapons and munition," the Israeli Makan newspaper said.

An initial IOF probe found that some 73,000 5.56 mm bullets were missing from the military base, as well as 72 grenades designed to be launched from an M-203 grenade launcher mounted under the barrel of an assault rifle.

The Israeli occupation is also investigating whether IOF soldiers had a hand in the incident, though the media was not able to get further detail.

The findings of the investigation are to be presented to Major General Ori Gordin, the chief of the Northern Command of the IOF, within a month, the IOF announced after Gordin set up a "panel of experts" to investigate the incident.

This comes less than a month after a similar incident saw some 30,000 bullets going missing from a base in southern occupied Palestine.

The Israeli occupation fears that stolen munition and weapons would be used in resistance operations carried out across the occupied West Bank.

According to Makan, the Israeli occupation forces are carrying out search operations in the area where the equipment went missing in search of the munition, though nothing has been reported to be found yet.

"Some suspects have been arrested, and contrary to the established procedure for issuing censorship orders by a duty judge, police and military police investigators resorted to military censorship to prevent the publication of the news," the news site said.

"The usage of military censorship is an exception and should not be used during the investigation into burglaries of weapons."

A security source said it was later clarified that it was a mistake to use military censorship to prevent news about the investigation from coming out, "and informing a judge would have been the right thing to do."

The occupation's main concern is that the munition makes it to somewhere such as Jenin or Nablus, where there has been an escalation against Palestinians.

Another incident of the sort took place on January 3, 2021. Israeli media reported at the time that more than 93,000 bullet rounds were taken from an IOF base in Al-Naqab, which marked the largest incident of the sort.