MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguayan troops bound for Golan Heights

García said the annual relief was scheduled before the war broke out

A Uruguayan Air Force (FAU) Hercules C-130 transport aircraft departed Wednesday carrying some 200 troops to be deployed in the Golan Heights, on the border between Israel and Syria, for a United Nations peacekeeping mission, it was reported in Montevideo.

They are going to a place close to the war zone, although “relatively distant,” Defense Minister Javier García explained.

“It is a situation of alert, both this contingent and the one in Lebanon. It is a region that although it is distant from where the military actions are taking place, it is a relatively small region where everything is close,” García elaborated.

This group is to replace the one currently deployed in the area. “I spoke with some of the chiefs and the situation is normal where our contingents are, we have to follow the reality day by day and hour by hour,” the Minister insisted.

He said the new mission was “the scheduled, annual relief” which “in these particular circumstances ... coincided because it is going to the Golan Heights area in Syria, bordering Israel, and well there we have 210 compatriots.”

The official insisted these soldiers were used to dealing with situations where peace needed to be enforced, and they “ultimately” serve “under the flag of the United Nations.”

He added that ”our Army, our soldiers (...) have a very important mission and responsibility and the peace of mind that they are with the closeness, with the care that the United Nations and the Uruguayan Army and we ourselves, the Uruguayan State, provide them.”

Regarding the Hercules plane sent to bring back at least 100 Uruguayans stranded in Israel as tourists, García explained that the aircraft had departed even before all the necessary permits for the stopovers had been received and hoped they would be delivered during the flight.