Israel army : Syria gunfire hits Golan Heights, no injuries

Gunfire from Syria hit the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Thursday morning, the Israeli military said, in the latest spillover of violence from the bloody civil war raging across the ceasefire line. "Stray bullets fired in Syria reached Israel. No soldiers were injured by the gunfire," a spokeswoman said. "The incident took place in the central Golan, near Tel HaZeka." On Sunday, Israeli troops had fired a warning shot across the UN-monitored ceasefire line in response to Syrian fire, in the first instance of Israeli fire directed at the Syrian military in the Golan Heights since the 1973 war. The following day, Israeli tanks fired into, confirming "direct hits" on the source of a mortar round that struck the Golan Heights. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak made a brief visit to the Golan Heights on Wednesday and were briefed on the two previous incidents by the head of the army's northern command. "We are determined to defend our territory and our border. I've made this clear to the other side," his office quoted Netanyahu as saying. "A new reality is affecting the government in Syria: New forces are emerging from the cracks in the Syrian regime -- forces which are affiliated with global Jihad and are even more hostile to Israel. We are also preparing to deal with this." Fears of a spillover of the conflict which has ravaged Syria for the past 20 months and left more than 39,000 dead, have widened as violence has spread to Syria's borders with Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.