The Syrian army says it has shot down an Israeli warplane and drone in Syria after an Israeli attack on a Syrian army position.
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The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency later reported that the Israeli warplane went down near the town of Quneitra, while the drone was downed near Sa’sa’, both in southern Syria.
Syria and Israel have been at a state of war for decades. In response to the mortar fire, Israeli Air Force fighter jets struck Syrian regime cannons in the Syrian Golan Heights this evening.
Later on Tuesday, the Israeli military said another “projectile” fired from Syria hit the Golan Heights, causing no injuries. “IDF aircraft were not harmed”.
Israeli aircraft did indeed conduct an overnight mission in Syrian airspace after Syrian mortar shells once again landed on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights on Monday.
Officials claimed they were responding to “naked aggression [by the] Zionist enemy, supporting armed terrorist groups in a desperate attempt to raise morale that collapsed after heavy losses incurred in the Quneitra region”.
Fighting between government forces and rebel groups continued in Quneitra after the cease-fire started Monday at sundown but calmed by Tuesday morning, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a United Kingdom -based opposition monitoring group.
Syria: Will ceasefire hold in first 24 hours?
Since the signing of a 1974 disengagement agreement between Syria and Israel, a cease-fire line has separated the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights from a Syria-administered buffer zone.
Israel seized 1,200 square kilometres (460 square miles) of the Golan Heights from Syria in the Six-Day War of 1967 and later annexed it in a move never recognised by the global community.
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The Israeli strike inside Syria came just hours after the USA and Russian Federation brokered a nationwide cease-fire in Syria in the second attempt by the two world powers to halt the ongoing conflict.
