Sky News 27-Jan-15
The Israeli military has responded with artillery fire after
two rockets were apparently launched from Syria into the Israeli-controlled
Golan Heights.
Some Lebanese and Syrian media have reported casualties as a
result of the retaliatory shelling, although this has yet to be confirmed.
The possibility the projectiles were "spill-over"
from fighting in the Syria's civil war were dismissed by Israel's military
spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, who said the fire "appeared to
be intentional".
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the rocket fire,
which appears to have come from the Syrian Golan - an area where Sunni rebel
and Islamist groups are engaged in battles for control of territory with the
Syrian army, who are supported by the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.
No injuries or damage were reported on the Israeli side, but
police evacuated the nearby Mount Hermon ski resort, put in place widespread
road closures and told residents to remain indoors or in bomb shelters.
The two rockets that landed in the Israeli-controlled Golan
Heights were amongst four fired in total, which triggered rocket sirens in the
predominantly Druze towns and villages throughout the Golan.
The firing comes a week after an airstrike - believed to
have been carried out by the Israeli Air Force - which killed a senior Iranian
general and six members of Hezbollah in the Syrian province of Quneitra, near
the Israeli border.
Warnings from both Iran and Hezbollah that Israel would face
a response for the attack have ratcheted up tensions along the border areas,
prompting numerous scares in recent days about infiltrations into northern
Israel from Lebanon that have turned out to be false alarms.
Some ordnance from the fighting in Syria has spilled over
into Israel in the past few years, most of which was treated as errant fire.
Israeli troops, however, have on several occasions returned fire.
Israel took control of the Golan Heights, a strategic
plateau overlooking northern Israel, from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War and
later annexed it.
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