Israeli air force strikes Syrian army targets

Israeli soldiers are seen next to mobile artillery units near the border with Syria in the Golan Heights January 27, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

JERUSALEM - The Israeli Air Force struck the Syrian army's artillery posts late Tuesday in response to an earlier rocket attack from the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, the military said Wednesday.

"The IDF (Israel Defense Forces) holds the Syrian government accountable for all attacks emanating from its land, and will operate by any means necessary to defend Israeli civilians," the IDF said in a statement.

"Such blatant breaches of Israeli sovereignty will not be tolerated," said the statement.

A rocket alert siren was also heard after midnight Wednesday on the Golan Heights, though the IDF said no rockets landed in Israeli-controlled territory.

Meanwhile, the pan-Arab al-Mayadeen TV also reported the airstrikes, saying the targeted military sites are located near the Tal Shahem town in Syria's southern province of Qunaitera.

No casualties were caused by the strikes, according to the report.

On Tuesday afternoon, four rockets were fired from Syria and two of them exploded in open areas of Israel's Golan Heights. The IDF responded with artillery fire, and identified a hit on the source of the rockets.

Israeli security forces said Hezbollah and Syrian forces orchestrated the rocket attack in retaliation to an alleged Israeli airstrike last week in Syria, which killed a Hezbollah commander and an Iranian general.

Since the air strike, troops and civilians in northern Israel and the Golan Heights have been on heightened alert and Israel has deployed an Iron Dome rocket interceptor unit near the Syrian border.

Israel captured the Golan from Syria in the 1967 Middle East war. Mortar shells and rockets have struck the heights numerous times during Syria's nearly four-year-old civil war.