The Israeli army said three Syrian tanks entered the demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights on the Israel-Syrian border Saturday.
The Israel Defense Forces raised its alert level in the Northern Command area, and a military spokeswoman said Israel complained to the U.N. peacekeeping force in the area after the tanks entered.
The incident — the first such violation in 40 years — was not regarded as an incident of hostility toward Israel. Rather, the Syrian tanks were apparently facing off against Syrian rebel forces. Nonetheless, Syrian-Israeli relations are relentlessly fraught, and any border incident raises tensions.
Hebrew news site Ynet said there were reports that two Syrian armored personnel carriers also crossed into the zone.
The Syrian army vehicles were deployed just a few miles away from Israeli military positions.
Several mortar shells from the Syrian fighting have reportedly fallen in the same area in recent days, and one of them may caused a small fire.
The DMZ (Demilitarized Zone), which is about 7 kilometers (3.5 miles) at its widest and 200 meters (yards) at its narrowest, was created after the 1973 war in which Syria tried to retake the strategic plateau.
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