Israel Army Shoots Syrian 'with Cutters' on Golan Fence

Israeli soldiers shot and wounded a Syrian man trying to breach a frontier fence in the southern Golan with a pair of wire cutters on Saturday, a military spokeswoman said.

Lieutenant Colonel Avital Leibovich said Israeli forces "identified a civilian from Syria, a man approaching the border fence. The man was holding hydraulic cutters and tried to cut the fence.

"One of the soldiers opened fire, after shouting at him and opening fire in the air. The man was wounded in his knee and evacuated by a few Syrians," she said.

Israel has ramped up security along its ceasefire line with Syria in the occupied Golan Heights to keep refugees and militants out of the Jewish state as fighting between rebels and President Bashar Assad's regime intensifies.

Leibovich said the man's motives were unknown but stressed that "someone who comes in with cutters is not innocent," noting the proximity of the attempted infiltration to Israeli villages.

"We see this as an infiltration attempt and breaching the border, something that we cannot allow as there are villages in the area," she said.

However, a security official has told Agence France Presse that Israel would help anyone whose life was in genuine danger. "If they are refugees whose life is in danger, we will offer them temporary shelter," he said.

In May 2011, 14 people were killed when thousands of protesters in Syria and Lebanon tried to force their way across the fences into northern Israel, prompting the Israeli military to open fire.

A similar attempt by Syrian protesters a month later -- which resulted in what Israel said was 10 deaths, but Damascus said was 23 -- prompted the military to take steps to reinforce the ceasefire line.

Israel captured the Golan from Syria in the 1967 Six-Day War and unilaterally annexed the territory in 1981.