Israel attacks Syrian army sites in Golan Heights clash

JERUSALEM. KAZINFORM - Israel says it has attacked several Syrian military sites in retaliation for a bombing that wounded four of its troops in the occupied Golan Heights.

Israel's military said its targets included a Syrian army headquarters, a training facility and artillery units.

It comes after four Israeli soldiers were hurt in an explosion on Tuesday, BBC reports.

Syrian and Israeli forces have traded fire a number of times over the ceasefire line in the Golan Heights since the uprising in Syria began.

Israeli warplanes carried out air strikes on the Syrian facilities overnight, a spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said. He described the targets as on the Syrian-held side of the Golan Heights.

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"A short while ago the IDF targeted several Syrian army positions which aided and abetted the attack against IDF personnel yesterday," the army said in a statement early on Wednesday.

'Escalation of violence'

The Golan Heights, a rocky plateau in south-western Syria, has a political and strategic significance that belies its size.

Israel seized the region from Syria in the closing stages of the 1967 Middle East War, and thwarted a Syrian attempt to retake it in 1973.

The two countries remain technically in a state of war, and UN observers are deployed to monitor a 70km-long (44-mile) demilitarised zone.

Since the uprising began in Syria three years ago, both government forces and rebel fighters have repeatedly crossed into the buffer zone.

On Tuesday, Israel said four of its soldiers were injured as they approached the demilitarized zone after identifying "suspicious activity".

A wounded Israeli soldier is taken to a hospital after a bomb blast in the Golan Heights on 18 March 2014
IDF spokesman Lt Col Peter Lerner described the blast as "an unacceptable escalation of violence from Syria".

"We will not tolerate this threat against Israeli civilians or troops."

There was no immediate response from the Syrian government.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the border with Syria had been recently "filling up" with jihadist fighters hostile to Israel and militants from the Lebanese Shia Islamist movement, Hezbollah.

Two weeks ago, Israeli troops shot two "Hezbollah-affiliated terrorists" attempting to plant an explosive device near the fence demarcating the demilitarised zone, the Israeli military said.