Special to WorldTribune.com

NICOSIA — Al Qaida has been using stolen United Nations vehicles for terror bombings in southern Syria.

Syrian opposition as well as the regime of President Bashar Assad have reported the use of UN vehicles in attacks by Al Qaida’s Nusra Front for the Defense of Levant. They said Nusra was driving vehicles stolen from the UN Disengagement Observer Force along the frontier of Israel and Syria.

“They are using UN vehicles to get past regime checkpoints in the Dera province,” a source said.

In one case, the sources said, Nusra used two UN vehicles for a bombing against the Syrian Army near the city of Dera along the Jordanian border. Unlike the methods of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, Nusra has avoided suicide attacks and the driver managed to escape. Two Syrian soldiers were killed in the car bombings.

“Using UN equipment by the Nusra Front to carry out terrorist acts is unacceptable,” the UN said in a statement in late November.

Nusra has been leading a Sunni rebel offensive in the provinces of Dera and Quneitra in an effort to carve out a safe haven along the 200-kilometer Syrian border with Jordan. The sources reported heavy fighting between Nusra-led units and the Syrian Army, backed by Hizbullah and the National Defense Forces.

In September 2014, Nusra captured the UNDOF zone on the Syrian portion of the Golan Heights. The assault prompted a flight by nearly 1,000 UN staffers to neighboring Israel.