Thursday night, the Israeli Air Force killed the four terrorists who launched rockets into Israel the day before. The strike was carried out 10-15 kilometers inside Syrian territory, in an area controlled by the Syrian Army.

A senior IAF officer said, “This morning we struck a vehicle in Syria with four people on board. We tracked this cell and it was struck ten to 15 kilometers from the borders in territory under the complete control of the Syrian army.”

Syrian state TV reported the strike as killing five “unarmed civilians” at a Syrian army position. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the strike killed two pro-regime militiamen travelling in a car.

Another IAF strike at a military site in Quneitra was reported by Syrian news sources. They reported one Syrian soldier killed and eight wounded. Another airstrike hit a Syrian army weapons depot, artillery batteries, and communications antennae.

The airstrike came as part of an attack combining air force, artillery, and tanks, which targeted a total of 14 targets in Syria.

The attacks came as a response to four rockets being fired into Israel Thursday afternoon. All of the rockets landed in open fields, causing no damage or injuries. Two rockets fell in the Upper Galilee, setting a brush fire, and two fell in the Golan Heights.

“This shooting was carried out by the Islamic Jihad, with Iranian funding, and is a flagrant violation of the sovereignty of the State of Israel. The IDF holds the Syrian regime responsible for what is happening in its territory and will not tolerate any attempt to harm Israel’s sovereignty and the security of its citizens,” said the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.

Many mortars have fallen in the Golan recently, fired from Syria, but these have all been attributed to spillover from inter-Arab fighting in Syria and were not intended as acts of aggression towards Israel. This rocket attack was clearly aimed at Israel and the IDF response was the largest such response that has been seen in quite a while.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon stated in a press conference that this was a deliberate attack and a “coming attraction” for future Iranian backed aggression.