Boy killed in Golan Heights

The 15-year-old son of a civilian Defense Ministry contractor became Israel's first official casualty in Syria's three-year civil war. Sunday's attack also left two other people wounded, including the boy's father.

Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner, an Israeli military spokesman, called Sunday's attack "the most substantial incident" along the frontier with Syria since the beginning of the civil war. He said Israeli military officials did not know whether a rocket, mortar shell or some other explosive device had struck the vehicle, but he called the attack intentional.

"It was fired directly from east to west," Lerner said on Sunday, calling it a "direct hit" on the vehicle. "We have a hole in the fence, which indicates it could be a projectile," Lerner added.

He said the water tanker, on official Defense Ministry business, had driven along the fence that Israel has built on the border with Syria when the projectile struck it. He said that, in response, Israeli tanks opened fire at Syrian government positions, though he could not say whether the country's military or one of its many rebel factions had carried out the attack.

The incident occurred in the area of Tel Hazeka, or Mount Strength, near the Quneitra border crossing. According to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, government troops had shelled nearby targets on the border earlier in the day.

Occasional intervention

Israel has closely observed Syria's civil war but largely stayed out of fighting. The country does respond to fire that has landed on the Israeli side of the Golan, a 1,200-square-kilometer (460 square miles) swath seized from Syria after the 1967 Six-Day War in an annexation not internationally recognized. Israeli officials believe much of that fire has crossed the border unintentionally, but they have also accused various elements in Syria of intentionally shooting across the line on several occasions.

Israel holds Syria's government responsible for any attacks emanating from the country. Some Israeli officials have speculated that the cross-border attacks are an attempt by rebel factions to draw the military into fighting with the Syrian government and its Hezbollah proxy fighters.

The cross-border attacks come as Israel is engaged in daily violence in the occupied West Bank and Syria's frontier region with Iraq has fallen out of governmental control.

mkg/rc (Reuters, AFP, dpa, AP)