Israel fires into Syria after Golan attack on troops

Israeling, encouraged with a warming of relations of former foe Turkey, said it fired into Syria on Sunday and destroyed a machinegun position in the Golan Heights from where shots had been fired at Israeli soldiers in a further spillover of the Syrian civil war along a tense front.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it had been a deliberate attack on Israeli patrols in the occupied territory.

Israeli forces "destroyed a Syrian machine gun nest that fired twice in the last 24 hours on Israeli patrols operating to safeguard the border," the spokesman, Ofir Gendelman, said on his Twitter page.

Shells have fallen several times inside Israeli-controlled territory during Syria's civil war. Some of the incidents have drawn Israeli return fire.

Syria's southern provinces bordering Jordan and Israel have become an increasingly significant battleground as the capital Damascus – in Syria's south – comes into play and President Bashar al-Assad's forces fight hard to prevent rebel advances.

The Israeli military said one of its vehicles was hit late on Saturday by shooting from across the Israeli-Syrian ceasefire line on the Golan Heights, but no one was hurt.

After a second incident on Sunday, Israeli soldiers "responded with accurate fire toward the Syrian post from which they were fired on", the military said.

Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed the strategic plateau in 1981 in a move that has not won international recognition.

Israel has said for months that it expects Assad's government to fall and has voiced concern that its chemical weapons could fall into the hands of Lebanon's Hezbollah guerrillas and al Qaeda.