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Israel denies Syria shot down warplane

Syria’s army command said in a statement that Israeli warplanes had attacked an army position at 1 a.m. on Tuesday (2200 GMT, Monday) in the countryside of Quneitra province.

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No casualties from the mortar bomb were reported and the Israeli military said in a statement “aircraft targeted artillery positions of [the] Syrian regime in the central Syrian Golan Heights”.

The Israeli air force responded by conducting missions overnight to target Syrian regime artillery positions.

The Syrian armed forces have shot down an Israeli military aircraft in the disputed territory of Golan Heights, according to state media. “Nothing true about what they claim”, he added.

The row comes amid a Russia-US brokered ceasefire in Syria.

Israel’s army said Tuesday that Syria launched missiles toward Israeli war jets but missed, denying Syrian claims on downing an Israeli military drone.

A military spokeswoman told the AFP news agency that the mortar strike on Monday was most likely not intentional, but rather spillover from “internal fighting in Syria”.

Quneitra was seized by rebels in 2014 after battles with the Syrian Arab Army and remains under de-facto opposition control, sitting inside a United Nations “disengagement observer force zone”.

Israel occupied the Golan Heights during the 1967 Middle East war and formally annexed it in 1981, a move that was never recognised internationally.

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This was the fifth time errant projectiles stemming from the fighting in the Syrian Civil War has landed in Israeli territory over the past 10 days.

Syrian President لاashar al-Assad