His wife said the Israeli forces broke into the home of Bassam al-Safadi in Majdal Shams District on Wednesday morning and violently searched them, causing excessive property damage before detaining the journalist and confiscating his laptop and camera among other pieces of equipment. His whereabouts remain unknown.

An Israeli police source claimed Safadi was arrested over “incitement to violence and terrorism."

Later in the day, a court in Nazareth in northern Israel extended his detention until Sunday, the source added.

According to Israeli police, the 43-year-old Al-Alam TV correspondent is being held in Tzalmon prison in northern Israel.

Safadi used to file in-depth and influential reports from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, and earlier had shed light on the Tel Aviv regime’s plots to plunder any economically viable oil reserves located there.

His reports that “Israeli authorities steal the Golan's oil” had caught international attention.

Safadi’s arrest was not the first such incident and Israeli forces have on occasions arrested Al-Alam TV correspondents.

In 2009, Al-Alam News Network reported that Israeli forces had nabbed its Khadar Shaheen in al-Quds (Jerusalem), after he produced a special report about the aftermath of Israel’s 50-day military onslaught against the blockaded Gaza Strip in summer 2014.

The Israeli regime launched its 50-day onslaught on Gaza in early July 2014. The military aggression, which ended on August 26, killed nearly 2,200 Palestinians, including over 570 children.

Gaza has been under an Israeli siege since June 2007. The blockade has caused a decline in the standards of living as well as unprecedented levels of unemployment and unrelenting poverty.

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