An Israeli general has raised the possibility of creating a buffer zone in Syria, in cooperation with local forces wary of jihadist fighters, should President Bashar al-Assad be toppled, Reuters said.

Major-General Yair Golan said "many hundreds" of radical Islamists were fighting in Syria's two-year-old civil war and could "take root" in Israel's northern neighbor should Assad fall.

He said the Israeli military was working on the assumption that these fighters would ultimately launch attacks against Israel, which captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war.

"One measure we certainly cannot rule out is to create a security zone on the other side of the border," Golan, head of the military's northern command, said in an interview published on Monday in the Yisrael Hayom daily.

Golan, who oversees Israeli forces on the Syrian and Lebanese frontiers, did not say whether he envisages the deployment of Israeli troops in such a buffer area.