Israel responded to a Syrian strike that took the life of a fifteen-year-old Arab-Israeli in the Golan Heights first with tank shelling, and then with airstrikes on nine targets.
Watch below:
Two others, including the boy’s father, an Israeli defence contractor, were injured when a blast hit their vehicle.
Israel called the boy’s death the most substantial incident in the Golan since start of the Syrian conflict in 2011.
It is unclear whether Syrian rebels or government forces were behind the incident.
Israeli military spokesman, Lt Col Peter Lerner, told AP news agency the firing from Syria was “clearly intentional” but it was unclear whether it was the result of mortar fire, a roadside bomb or shelling.
The Golan Heights, a rocky plateau in south-western Syria, was seized by Israel from Syria in the closing stages of the 1967 Middle East War.
The two countries remain technically in a state of war, and UN observers are deployed to monitor a 70km-long (45-mile) demilitarised zone.
Firing linked to the Syrian conflict occasionally reaches the Israeli side of the border fence – some unintentional, some said to be deliberate.
This will no doubt lead to further destabilization of a region that’s been falling apart even worse than usual. We can fully expect Obama to dither away once he reads about the event in the newspapers tomorrow evening.