'US STRIKE TARGETING MOSQUE KILLS 46'
Syria-Israel tensions flare
Damascus launches missiles after Tel Aviv warplanes strike inside Syria
Israeli warplanes struck several targets in Syria early yesterday, prompting retaliatory missile launches, in the most serious incident between the two countries since the Syrian civil war began six years ago.
Syria's military said it had downed an Israeli plane and hit another as they were carrying out pre-dawn strikes near the famed desert city of Palmyra that it recaptured from jihadists this month.
The Israeli military denied that any planes had been struck. The Syrian government has made similar unfounded claims in the past.
Nevertheless, analysts said the incident represented a significant shift in Syria's response to Israeli airstrikes inside its territory.
The air force said earlier that it had carried out several strikes on Syria overnight, but that none of the ground-to-air missiles fired by Syrian forces in response had hit Israeli aircraft.
It was an unusual confirmation by the Jewish state of air raids inside Syria.
In April 2016, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu admitted for the first time that Israel had attacked dozens of convoys transporting weapons in Syria destined for Lebanon's Hezbollah, which fought a devastating 2006 war with Israel and is now fighting alongside the Damascus regime.
The missile fire from Syria prompted air raid sirens to go off in the Jordan Valley during the night, the Israeli army said.
Israel and Syria are still technically at war, though the border had remained largely quiet for decades until 2011 when the Syrian conflict broke out.
Meanwhile, the US said it carried out an air strike in Syria against an al-Qaeda meeting but denied deliberately targeting a mosque where a monitor said on Friday 46 people were killed.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said most of the dead in the Thursday evening raid on Al-Jineh, in the northern province of Aleppo, were civilians.
According to a Centcom statement: "US forces conducted an air strike on an al-Qaeda in Syria meeting location March 16 in Idlib, Syria, killing several terrorists."