Syria said it had shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone, a claim denied by Israel.
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In addition, the embassy temporarily forbade U.S. government employees from “personal travel into the area north of Route 87 and east of Route 918 in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights“.
Israel captured the plateau from Syria in a 1967 war.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) immediately refuted the report, saying a Syrian anti-aircraft battery had shot at its aircraft but missed their target. Jerusalem ultimately holds the Syrian government responsible for an attack emanating from inside its borders, even when it is unclear who fired the mortars or missiles.
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 Air Force aircraft were far from the shooting and the shooting was not a threat to our forces”, the statement said.
A total of four projectiles from Syria struck the Golan Heights on Monday and Tuesday, also thought to be errant fire, shortly after a ceasefire brokered by Russian Federation and the United States took effect in Syria.
It remains unclear if the IDF is also denying that a drone may have been shot down.
It accused Israeli forces of supporting “armed terrorist groups” in the country’s south.
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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”. It would not elaborate further.
