Red Cross transports Golan apples to Syria

The International Red Cross has helped transport the first shipment of apples from the Golan Heights to Syria

This year's first shipment of apples grown in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights has entered Syria via the town of Kuneitra, crossing the armistice line, a Syrian official said on Wednesday.

"International Committee of the Red Cross trucks delivered the first shipments of Syrian apples (grown) by our relatives in the Golan," said Medhat Saleh, who runs the Syrian cabinet's Golan bureau.

Some 18,000 apples from this year's harvest will be "transported gradually" by the ICRC, in coordination with the U.N. Disengagement Observer Force, at a rate of some 150 to 200 tonnes a day, Saleh told Agence France Presse.

Apple production is a key source of income for Syrian farmers in the Golan, which Israel occupied in the 1967 Six-Day War and annexed in 1981 in a move never recognized by the international community.