The Syrian leadership has sent messages to Israel warning that any further strikes by the IDF on targets within Syria’s borders would be met with Scud rockets fired deep into the Jewish state, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Diyar reported Saturday.

The Assad regime conveyed the message to Israel via Russian mediators, the report said.

According to the report, Syria warned that Israeli strikes on Syrian military targets would be met with the firing of Scud missiles capable of carrying half a ton of explosives at IDF bases, while an attack on civilian targets would see Syria launching a counter strike on the Haifa port and the petrochemical plants in the area.

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The report warned that Syria has over 800 Scud missiles and that Syria would not issue any warnings before the missile strikes because Israel does not warn before it hits.

On Wednesday, Israeli jets were reported to have carried out airstrikes near the Syrian capital of Damascus, hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to continue hitting weapons convoys and rebuffed claims Russia had ordered the strikes halted.

Syrian opposition news outlets reported that the airstrikes took place in the Mount Qasioun region near Damascus. The Israeli raids targeted Syrian army posts in the area, the reports said, in the fourth round of airstrikes attributed to Israel in Syria in less than a week.

There was no immediate confirmation from Jerusalem, nor any information on casualties or damage.

Tensions escalated between Israel and Syria recently, with Israel reportedly hitting various targets including strikes near the Lebanon-Syria border including a Hezbollah weapons convoy and Syrian military sites.

Also earlier in the week an Israeli drone strike reportedly killed a member of a Syrian pro-regime militia, an attack that came two days after Israeli jets, in an early morning operation, hit an arms transfer meant for Hezbollah near Palmyra, with Syrian air defenses firing missiles at the planes.

One missile was intercepted by Israel’s Arrow missile defense battery, military officials said, in the first reported use of the advanced system. It was the most serious incident between the two countries since the Syrian civil war began six years ago.

On Sunday evening, Syria’s ambassador to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari said Syria’s response to Friday’s strike was a “game-changer.” Speaking on Syrian state TV, Jaafari said the military’s response was “appropriate and in line with Israel’s terrorist operation,” and that Israel “will now think a million times [before striking again],” according to a translation cited by the Ynet news site.

“Syria’s forceful response to the Israeli attacks changed the rules of the game,” he said.

His comments came hours after Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman threatened to destroy Syrian air defense systems for targeting the Israeli aircraft during the bombing run Friday. “The next time the Syrians use their air defense systems against our planes we will destroy them without the slightest hesitation,” Liberman said on Israel Radio.

On Tuesday, Netanyahu denied reports that Moscow had told Israel to end airstrikes in the war-torn country and vowed to continue attacking weapons convoys.

Netanyahu said that he told Russian President Vladimir Putin during a March 9 meeting that Israel will continue to thwart attempts by Iran and its terrorist proxies, such as Hezbollah, to smuggle advanced weapons to Lebanon via Syria.

Israel has been largely unaffected by the Syrian civil war raging next door, suffering mostly sporadic incidents of spillover fire that Israel has generally dismissed as tactical errors by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces. Israel has responded to the errant fire with limited reprisals on Syrian positions.

The skies over Syria are now crowded, with Russian and Syrian aircraft backing Assad’s forces and a US-led coalition striking Islamic State and al-Qaeda targets.

Raphael Ahren and agencies contributed to this report.

</s>According to the message, delivered via Russian mediators, attacks on Syrian military objects will be met with Scud missiles launched at Israeli military (IDF) bases. If Israel attacks civilian infrastructure, Syrian missiles will be fired at Israel's Haifa port and petrochemical plant. The missiles will be launched without any prior notice, the statement said.

The notice follows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's March 20 statement that protecting its borders is the right and obligation of every nation.

"Syria's forceful response to the Israeli attacks changed the rules of the game," said Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari. He added that the threatened response is "appropriate and in line with Israel's terrorist operation," and that Israel "will now think a million times [before striking again]."

On March 17, Israeli military reported several airstrikes on Syrian territory; they were followed by several anti-aircraft missiles launched at Israeli warplanes flying over Syrian territory. One of the missiles was reportedly intercepted by Israel's Arrow missile defense system. However, Syrian authorities claim they successfully downed an Israeli plane not far from Damascus.

Following the incidents, Israel threatened to conduct strikes specifically to destroy Syrian anti-air batteries.

According to Israeli leadership, the airstrikes are aimed at fighting advanced weapons smuggling to Hezbollah in Lebanon across Syrian territory.

"Our politics is very consistent," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in the wake of the airstrikes. "When we know about an attempt to smuggle weapons to Hezbollah, we do whatever we can to prevent this from happening, provided we have sufficient information and capabilities to react."

According to media reports, during his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Netanyahu vowed to continue fighting attempts to smuggle weapons to Hezbollah through Syria. Netanyahu denied reports that he was told to cease military operations in Syria.

Israel and Syria have not engaged in any kind of serious military confrontation since civil war broke out in Syria six years ago. The sporadic, over-the-border fire is dismissed by Israeli authorities. There are about 800 Soviet-made Scud missiles, capable of delivering half a ton of explosives, located in Syria.</s>TEL AVIV – The Assad regime in Syria has sent messages to Israel via Russia threatening that any further strikes by the Israeli military within Syria’s borders will be met with Scud missiles attacks on the Jewish state, the Lebanese newspaper Al-Diyar reported Saturday.

Syria warned that Israeli strikes on its military would result in Scud missiles capable of carrying half a ton of explosives being launched at IDF bases, while strikes in civilian areas would be met with counterstrikes on the northern coastal city of Haifa and petrochemical plants in the region, the report claimed.

According to the report, Syria has over 800 Scud missiles and will issue no advance warning before launching them.

Israeli airstrikes were reported overnight Tuesday in the Mount Qasioun region near the Syrian capital of Damascus, according to Syrian opposition media. The strikes targeted Syrian military outposts and destroyed a military weapons warehouse. The incident marked the fourth round of Israeli airstrikes reported in under a week.

Israel has been targeting Hezbollah-bound weapons convoys in Syria. Tuesday’s strike came hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refuted claims that Russia had ordered Israel to stop the strikes.

A recent Israeli strike on a Hezbollah weapons transfer just over a week ago was met with retaliatory missiles from Syria, the first serious cross-border clash since the civil war began. One missile was intercepted by Israel’s Arrow missile defense battery.

Two days later, Syria’s ambassador to the UN Bashar al-Jaafari said on state TV that the retaliation was in response to Israel’s “terrorist operation.”

His comments followed Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman’s warning that “The next time the Syrians use their air defense systems against our planes we will destroy them without the slightest hesitation.”</s>Following these reports, Benjamin Netanyahu stated "it’s simply incorrect to say the Russians are changing their policy toward us," although what exactly is going on behind closed doors remains a mystery. Over the last week, Israel has only ramped up its strikes in Syria, with multiple missions being carried out including the assassination of a militant leader with close ties to the Assad regime. Since the Syrian civil war began six years ago, Israeli air strikes in Syrian territory were far less frequent, and the Israeli government did not officially even admit that they had been occurring until Syria fired on the IAF's jets nearly two weeks ago.

As far as Syria's ability to carry out such a counterstrike against Israeli targets—there is no doubt that the Assad regime still retains hundreds of Scud derivatives of various origins. These include copies from North Korea and from Iran. During the Syrian civil war that continues today, Assad's forces have used Scuds against their own people.

Israel has an extremely capable anti-ballistic missile defense system that has a multitude of layers aimed at countering everything from small improvised artillery rockets to medium-range ballistic missiles. Still, a barrage of short-range ballistic missiles from Syria, even if they are all intercepted or fail to hit their targets, would result in a major IAF operation to route Assad's ballistic missile capabilities, and could even include the targeting of Syrian command and control or regime targets as well.</s>The war in Syria is heating up yet again with signs that the conflict may soon be about to take greater international dimensions. This is all due to greater Israeli participation and aggression in Syria against the Syrian military and on the behalf of terrorist organizations fighting against the Syrian government. The questions that remain, however, are whether or not the Israelis are willing to tempt the resolve of the anti-terrorist coalition of Syria, Hezbollah, Iran, and Russia and how steadfast that resolve of those powers might actually be.

In the past week, we have seen an escalation in the Syrian conflict the likes of which we have not seen in decades in terms of Israeli-Syrian tensions as well as the potential for a clash of nuclear world powers in the Middle East as a combat theatre.

After a mobilization of U.S. troops near Manbij – designed to prevent the Syrian military from retaking the city and as a means to stop combat between Turkish and Kurdish forces – Israel launched an air attack on Syrian targets near Palmyra, the Zionist settler state’s farthest penetration into Syria yet. Israel claimed it was bombing an Iranian-Hezbollah weapons convoy while the Syrian government claimed Israel had targeted Syrian military positions who were in the process of combating ISIS. Regardless, Israel clearly violated international law and the concept of national sovereignty.

This time, however, Israel was not able to bomb and bail as they have done eleven times in the past as Syrian air defense systems were mobilized and an Israeli jet shot down as a result. This shoot-down was apparently launched after the Syrian military informed the Russian military of its intention to shoot down the Israeli planes. It is assumed that the Russians did not object to the use of force.

Indeed, Russian Marines were only a few kilometers away from where the Syrian military was attacked. After the attack, the Russian government summoned the Israeli Ambassador, Gary Koren, to demand an explanation for the operation. This, in and of itself, is an unprecedented event.

Very soon after the shoot-down, both Syria and Israel engaged in a war of words and threats regarding any future incidents. For instance, Israeli Defense Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, stated that, “The next time the Syrians use their air defence systems against our planes we will destroy them without the slightest hesitation.”

Syria’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Dr. Bashar al-Jaafari, also responded to the incident with statements of his own.

“Putin sent a clear message,” he said. “The fact is that the Israeli ambassador [to Russia] was summoned for a conversation only a day after he submitted his credentials [to the Russian Foreign Ministry last Thursday], and was told categorically that this game is over.”

Jaafari pointed out that the attack has changed the rules of the game and that Syria will not sit idly by while Israel attacks its forces.

But, on Sunday, a new incident arose with the Israelis launching an airstrike in Quneitra, located in the Golan Heights. Syrian news media reported the incident first, saying that a militia commander had been killed in the strike. Lebanese television station, al-Mayadeen identified the man killed as Yasser Assayed, member of the National Defense Militia. He was a commander of the Golan Brigade, a Druze militia fighting alongside the Syrian military against terrorists. The assassination was allegedly conducted by virtue of an unmanned Israeli drone.

On March 19-20, Israel launched more airstrikes on the Lebanese-Syria border, supposedly targeting a Hezbollah weapons supply convoy.

On Monday, March 20, an Israeli drone was shot down over the Golan area allegedly by Syrian aerial defense systems. Hezbollah paraded pictures of the downed drone on its social media pages as proof of the shoot down, forcing Israel to admit that the UAV had indeed been brought down.

And the Israelis have yet to stop their aggression. In fact, despite having been warned by the Syrian government and having apparently angered Russia over the initial airstrikes, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is doubling down on the perceived Israeli right to bomb anyone anywhere anytime without consequences.

“If there is feasibility from an intelligence and military standpoint – we attack and so it will continue,” said Netanyahu during his visit to China. He added that he informed President Putin of Israel’s intentions.

On Wednesday, March 22, Israel launched more airstrikes deeper inside Syrian territory, targeting Syrian army posts near the capitol, Damascus. This marks the fourth Israeli airstrike operation in Syria within one week.

Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, stated that Russia is relying on Israel to abide by the agreements that were established during Netanyahu’s official state visit to Russia earlier in March where the two men held extensive talks regarding the Syrian crisis.

“We will judge not by their statements, but by their actions, to what extent our Israeli partners are sticking to these agreements,” said Lavrov.

Syrian President Assad told Russian MPs visiting Syrian that he is counting on Russia to do something about any further Israeli attacks on Syria and to assist Syria in avoiding a real full-scale war with Israel.

Israel has been regularly bombing Syria over the last decade with increasing attacks taking place since the Western-backed destabilization beginning in 2011. In 2017, however, have seen the biggest concentration of attacks thus far.

But while the conflict between Syria and Israel heats up, the ever-present suicidal American readiness to fight and die to the last American to preserve Israel also comes into play. In the past, the United States, due to geopolitical interests at vastly higher levels than that of the Oval Office, the immense sums of money use to purchase members of Congress, and the extraordinary religious brainwashing of many American Christians, the United States is always poised to leap into World War Three to protect the “little Jewish Ulster” and biggest destabilizing factor in the Middle East today.

Assad’s comments and Israel’s behavior reveals that a full-scale war is bubbling just below the surface, perhaps only hours away. Comments coming from a number of Israeli officials only a week ago has made it clear that Israel would naturally draw Hezbollah into such a war as well, perhaps involving Iran if for no other reason than the fact that Iran is the principal patron of the militia group. The question would then become whether or not Russia will simply allow Israel to undo all of the anti-terrorist work it has undertaken since it became involved militarily in Syria. The United States is another wild card, having instigated the entire crisis and having been an unwavering goon for Israel since the settler state’s beginnings. At this point, we would be witnessing the steep drop off to not only regional war but also potentially a world war of unimaginable proportions.

Hopefully, for the sake of the world, Russia will be able to talk Netanyahu from leading the world into conflagration but, given the Israeli penchant for being unreasonable, we at least hope that the United States will not sacrifice itself to become further embroiled in the Syrian conflict on Israel’s behalf.</s>* Israel and Russia may agree to steer clear of each other

HERZLIYA, Israel, Sept 8 Indications of increased Russian involvement in Syria in support of President Bashar al-Assad are prompting a reassessment in Israel about how to handle fall-out from the conflict without risking a clash with Moscow.

Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, Israel has occasionally fired across the Golan Heights in response to spillover shelling or bombed advanced arms it suspected were to be transferred to Assad's Lebanese guerrilla allies, Hezbollah.

U.S. and regional reports that Moscow's diplomatic and logistical support for Assad is shifting into major military backing has raised the prospect of Israel and Russia accidentally coming to blows.

"There could be ramifications for us, certainly," Ram Ben-Barak, director-general of Israel's Intelligence Ministry, told Reuters when asked if Russian intervention in Syria might necessitate new Israeli rules of engagement.

He was speaking at a security conference organised by the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center, where Russian policy in Syria was described both as an effort to shore up Assad and mobilise with other world powers in suppressing Islamic State insurgents.

"We have been informed that the Russians are entering into active intervention, the Americans are attacking ... The West and now, in fact, the Russians and the whole world are trying to unite against them (Islamic State)," Amos Gilad, senior adviser to Israeli Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon, said in a speech.

In separate remarks to Reuters, Gilad said it was too early to know how extensive Moscow's military involvement in Syria would be and whether it might clip Israel's wings operationally.

"I don't know, because the scale is not yet clear. They haven't started working. They are just building up the capability," Gilad said of the Russian activity.

Asked if Israel was communicating with Russia in a bid to head off any unintended confrontations between their forces, he said only: "There are ways. They are not our enemies today."

In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said she had no information about any communication between Israel and Russia.

Israel has sought to stay out of the Syrian civil war, seeing enemies on all sides. It says it intervenes militarily only when fired upon from Syria or to prevent Hezbollah operatives reinforcing Assad there from gaining advanced weapons that could pose a threat to it from Lebanon in the future.

Past Israeli strikes in Syria killed Syrian troops as well as Hezbollah fighters, according to both countries and the guerrilla group - though the exact number remains unclear.

In recent days, Moscow has reaffirmed its military backing for Damascus but said it was premature to talk about Russian participation in military operations in Syria.

U.S. authorities have detected "worrisome preparatory steps", including transport of prefabricated houses for hundreds of people to a Syrian airfield, that could signal Russia is readying for deployment of heavy military assets, a senior U.S. official told Reuters last week.

Syria has not formally responded to the reports. But one of its military officials has spoken of a "big shift" in Russia's military support for Damascus.

Amos Yadlin, an Israeli air force ex-general and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's former military intelligence chief, said Israel and Russia were unlikely to find themselves pitted against each other in Syria as they had different areas of interest.

"I don't think there is any reason for the sides to collide, as we are not fighting the same enemy. I assume that we will be very careful, and so will they," said Yadlin, now director of Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies.

He predicted Russian forces would avoid the Golan, near Israel's northern front, and Israel would think twice about carrying out air strikes where Russians might be harmed.

"My assumption is that we don't attack any site on the ground in Syria unless we have an excellent picture of who is or isn't there," Yadlin said.

A senior U.S. official briefed on Israel's actions in Syria shared Yadlin's assessment, but cautioned: "Nothing is fool-proof, so I can anticipate the Israelis will be looking anew at their risk-assessments now."

Syria's ageing air force is largely Soviet-supplied, posing a possible scenario where similar models of jets and choppers could be flown by local and Russian pilots.

Sam Gardiner, a retired U.S. air force colonel who runs wargames for various Washington agencies, said Israel would likely be able to spot Russian-operated aircraft in good time.

"Russian aircraft would probably have a different 'signature' - even if they're the same airplane they wouldn't be equipped with the same electronics," he said, theorising that the Israelis would know which Syrian airbases were being used by Russia and be able to trace Russian-language radio communications to the jets or helicopters they came from. (Additional reporting by Gabriel Baczynska in Moscow and Tom Perry in Beirut; writing by Dan Williams; editing by Philippa Fletcher)</s>Nov 18 Syria has used up more than 90 percent of its ballistic missiles against rebels during a more than four-year-old civil war but a few were transferred to Hezbollah guerrillas in neighbouring Lebanon, a senior Israeli military officer said on Wednesday.

Israel, which is expanding its high-altitude Arrow air defence system with U.S. help, has been keeping an eye on Syria's Scud-type missiles as well as Iran's long-range Shehabs as potential threats.

"The number of (Syrian) ballistic missiles left is less than 10 percent," a senior Israeli officer told Reuters on condition of anonmity, but added: "That could still change. They could start making them again."

Syrian opposition activists say Damascus' army has fired dozens of devastating Scud-type missiles at rebel-held areas, out of a ballistic arsenal believed to have numbered in the hundreds before the insurgency erupted in 2011.

Israel had a stable standoff with Syria's ruling Assad family for decades. It sees little chance of the now fractured Arab neighbour going to war with it now, but is still on guard for any accidental cross-border launches or deliberate attacks by jihadi rebels.

The Israelis are more worried about Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which fought their superior military to a standstill in a 2006 Lebanon war and has been building up its arsenal.

Hezbollah now has more than 100,000 rockets, including "around 10" advanced Scud-D missiles with conventional warheads supplied by Syria, the senior Israeli military officer said.

Hezbollah does not comment publicly on its military capabilities but has confirmed improving them since 2006. (Writing by Dan Williams; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)</s>The soldiers were killed when Hezbollah fired five missiles at a convoy of Israeli military vehicles on the frontier with Lebanon.

The peacekeeper, serving with a U.N. monitoring force in southern Lebanon, was killed as Israel responded with air strikes and artillery fire, a U.N. spokesman and Spanish officials said.

Hezbollah said one of its brigades in the area had carried out the attack, which appeared to be in retaliation for a Jan. 18 Israeli air strike in southern Syria that killed several Hezbollah members and an Iranian general.

"Those behind the attack today will pay the full price," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned later on Wednesday, in televised remarks as he met with security chiefs.

The Israeli military confirmed the deaths of the soldiers, saying they had been attacked while driving in unmarked civilian vehicles on a road next to the fence that marks the hilly frontier. Seven other soldiers were wounded.

Andrea Tenenti, spokesman for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), which employs more than 10,000 troops, said the peacekeeper's death was under investigation.

The U.N. special coordinator for Lebanon urged all parties to refrain from any further detribalization of the situation, while Lebanon's prime minister said his country was committed to the U.N. resolution that ended the 2006 war.

The 80-km (50-mile) frontier has largely been quiet since 2006, when Hezbollah and Israel fought a 34-day war in which 120 people in Israel and more than 500 in Lebanon were killed.

Since the end of the war with Hamas militants in Gaza last year, Israel has warned of frictions on the northern border and the possibility that Hezbollah might dig tunnels to infiltrate Israel. In recent days it has moved more troops and military equipment into the area.

A retired Israeli army officer, Major-General Israel Ziv, said he believed Wednesday's assault was an attempt by Hezbollah to draw Israel more deeply into the war in Syria, where Hezbollah is fighting alongside forces loyal to President Assad.

"Israel needs to protect its interests but not take any unnecessary steps that may pull us into the conflict in Syria," he said.

Netanyahu, who faces a parliamentary election on March 17, said Israel was "prepared to act powerfully on all fronts".

He accused Iran of trying to establish a "terror front" via Hezbollah from Syria and said Israel was "acting aggressively and responsibly against this attempt". Iran is a major funder of Hezbollah, a Shi'ite group headed by Hassan Nasrallah.

In a communique, Hezbollah called Wednesday's operation "statement number one", indicating a further response to the Syrian incident was possible. Nasrallah is expected to announce the group's formal reaction to Israel's Jan. 18 air strike on Friday.

In Beirut, celebratory gunfire rang out after the attack, while residents in the southern suburbs of the city, where Hezbollah is strong, packed their bags and prepared to evacuate neighborhoods that were heavily bombed by Israel in 2006.

In Gaza, Palestinian militant groups praised Hezbollah. The United States said it condemned the Shi'ite group's "act of violence" and urged all parties to refrain from actions that could escalate the situation.

With an Israeli election looming and Hezbollah deeply involved in support of Assad in Syria, there would appear to be little interest in a wider conflict for either side.

Regional analysts said they did not expect events to spiral.

"Netanyahu most likely realizes that a prolonged military engagement in Lebanon could cost him the election," said Ayham Kamel and Riccardo Fabiani of the Eurasia Group.

"Instead, Israel will pursue limited actions targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon, but the low-scale, tit-for-tat exchanges will not broaden into a wider war."</s>An Israeli military spokesman said the army "responded with artillery towards the positions that launched the attack" and that it ordered the evacuation of Israel's Mt. Hermon ski resort on the Golan Heights after the rockets struck.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility or any report of casualties.

"It does not seem that it was errant fire," Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesman, told Reuters.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters U.S. officials "do not want to see an escalation of the situation." Psaki said the United States calls "upon all parties to avoid any action that would jeopardize the long-held ceasefire between Israel and Syria."

"We support Israel's legitimate right to self defense and have been clear about our concerns over the regional instability caused by the crisis in Syria," Psaki added.

Meanwhile, Iran has told the United States last week's air strike crossed "red lines" and that it will respond, IRNA news agency on Tuesday quoted a senior official as saying.

"We told the Americans that the leaders of the Zionist regime should await the consequences of their act," deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said.

"In this message to the Americans we said that the Zionist regime had crossed our red lines," he said.

In the Israeli air strike on a Hezbollah convoy near the Golan Heights on Jan. 18, an Iranian Revolutionary Guard general, Mohammed Allahdadi, was killed along with a Hezbollah commander and the son of the group's late military leader, Imad Moughniyeh.

Both Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran and fought a 34-day war with Israel in 2006, and the Revolutionary Guards vowed to avenge the deaths.

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.

Israel has said some of those incidents deliberately targeted its soldiers while others were spillover from fighting between rebels and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.</s>Israel's vulnerability to cross-border tunnels was exposed during a July-August war with Gaza's Islamist Hamas, when Palestinian militants infiltrated through a network of secret passages to carry out attacks.

"We are making checks on the ground following residents' concerns. We have no intelligence indicating Hezbollah has dug a tunnel, but anything is possible," the source said. "It is the first time we are conducting a search on this scale."

Residents of in the area, under fire from Hezbollah rockets during a month-long war in 2006, have at times reported underground noises and fear that militants are digging tunnels.

Tension on Israel's northern frontier, with Lebanon and Syria, has risen since an Israeli air strike on Jan. 18 in Syria killed several Hezbollah fighters, including a senior commander and an Iranian general, near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.

Israeli officials have said Hezbollah was too embroiled in the Syrian civil war, fighting alongside Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against rebels and jihadists trying to topple him, to launch a large-scale war against Israel in the near future.

But in preparation for possible future conflict with Israel, a senior intelligence officer told Reuters last month that Hezbollah was working to expand its tactics to include fighters launching raids on Israeli territory.
In response to several Israeli airstrikes against suspected Hezbollah-related targets inside Syria, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has threatened wider war with the State of Israel, stating its intention to fire Scud missiles, and specifically target the Israeli city of Haifa. Israel responded by stating that any such actions by the Assad regime, or attacks on its aircraft, will cause Israel to "annihilate" Syrian air defense systems.