TEL AVIV, February 19 : (Sputnik) An Israeli citizen has been brought back home after she was released from Syrian jail as part of a Russia-mediated prisoner swap, Israel’s state-run Kan broadcaster reported on Friday.

Earlier in the day, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for the assistance in returning an Israeli citizen who had been arrested in Syria when crossing the border between the countries by mistake.

“An Israeli woman who crossed the border with Syria has landed at Ben Gurion airport together with the Israeli delegation that planned to transport her from Moscow. It is expected that Shabak [Israel’s Shin Bet Security Agency] will interrogate her about the circumstances of the incident,” the media outlet said.

On Wednesday, Syrian news agencies reported that the country negotiated with Israel on a Russia-brokered prisoner swap deal with an aim to free two incarcerated Syrian citizens, Nihal al-Maqt and Dhiyab Qahmuz, in exchange for a 25-year-old Israeli woman who accidentally entered the Syrian province of Quneitra.

According to media reports, Qahmuz, a resident of an Israeli Arab village on the Lebanese border, received a 14-year sentence in 2018 for smuggling explosives from Lebanon’s Hezbollah into Israel and plotting a terrorist attack. Al-Maqt, a Syrian resident of the northern Golan Heights, was indicted by an Israeli court in 2017 for incitement.(UNI)