DAMASCUS, Syria -- Syria said Tuesday it destroyed an Israeli vehicle that crossed the cease-fire line in the Golan Heights overnight, while the Israeli military said gunfire from Syria had hit an Israeli patrol, damaging a vehicle and prompting its troops to fire back.

The two sides appeared to be referring to the same incident.

Sporadic fire from Syria's civil war has occasionally hit the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, a strategic plateau Israel captured in the 1967 war. Israel assumes most of the incidents are accidental fire but its forces have responded on several occasions.

Tuesday's incident, however, marked the first time that the Syrian army has acknowledged firing at Israeli troops across the frontier, and appeared to be an attempt by President Bashar Assad's regime to project toughness following three Israeli airstrikes near Damascus this year.

The strikes, which targeted alleged Syrian arms shipments bound for the Lebanese Hezbollah militant group, marked a sharp escalation of Israel's involvement in the Syrian civil war.

They also raised fears that a conflict that has repeatedly spilled over Syria's borders could turn into a full-fledged regional war.

Syria vowed to retaliate and Assad said Syria is "capable of facing Israel" and would not accept violations of its sovereignty. Firing at an Israeli target seems to be in line with the tougher rhetoric that followed the airstrikes.

A statement issued Tuesday by the Syrian Armed Forces said its troops destroyed the Israeli vehicle along "with those in it."

It said Israel later fired two missiles toward one of the Syrian positions in the village of Zobaydiya village, causing no casualties.

The village is located inside the Syrian-controlled Golan and the state-run SANA news agency said rebels were operating in the area. The border zone has seen repeated breaches during Syria's two-year civil war as rebels took control over some villages near the cease-fire line.

The army statement carried by SANA said any attempt to infiltrate Syria's sovereignty will face "immediate and firm retaliation."

Earlier Tuesday, Israel's military said gunfire from Syria had hit an Israeli patrol on the Golan Heights overnight, damaging a vehicle and prompting the troops to fire back.

It said that the Israeli troops reported a "direct hit" from the return fire but provided no further details.

Related:

• On the Brink: Syria chaos looms large over Obama's Israel trip
• Analysis: Israel prepares for the worst as militants eye Syria's chemical weapons
• UN: About 20 Golan Heights peacekeepers captured by Syrian rebels

AFP / Getty Images

A September 30, 2000, file combo of TV grabs from France 2 footage taken during Israeli-Palestinian clashes in Netzarim in the Gaza Strip shows Jamal al-Dura and his son Mohammed, 12, hiding behind a barrel from Israeli-Palestinian cross fire.

TEL AVIV, Israel — It is an extraordinary image that became a global symbol of Palestinian victimhood at the hands of the Israelis: A 12-year-old old boy cowering behind his father moments before he was killed during a gunbattle in Gaza.

But a new Israeli government report out on Sunday asserts that there is no evidence that the child, Mohammed al-Dura, was shot dead by Israeli soldiers 13 years ago and "numerous indications" that he and his father Jamal were not actually hit by any bullets.

Jamal al-Dura reportedly responded to the claim on Monday by offering to exhume the child’s body from a Gaza cemetery to allow a forensic examination.

"Are they willing to do an international investigation? Is Israel willing? I'm not saying the people of Israel, I mean the government, and IDF soldiers," Jamal told Army Radio, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Indeed, the question arises: If Israel is right and Mohammed was not killed, what actually happened to him and where is the 25-year-old today?

Photo by Newsmakers

The family of 12 year-old Palestinian boy Mohammed al-Dura, center, in blue shirt, poses in an undated family photo at their home in the Gaza Strip. Mohammed's apparent death captured the world's attention.

His apparent death in Sept. 30, 2000, was first reported by television station France 2. A video showed the young Mohammed hiding behind his father, who himself was sheltering behind a barrel, as Israeli soldiers and Palestinians fought it out on a Gaza Strip street corner.

The boy, who was allegedly killed in the fighting on the second day of the second Palestinian uprising against Israel, quickly became infamous across the globe.

However an Israeli investigatory committee found that “contrary to the [France 2] report's claim that the boy is killed, the committee's review of the raw footage showed that in the final scenes, which were not broadcast by France 2, the boy is seen to be alive,” according to a statement issued by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office. The review was begun last year at a request of the prime minister.

“The review revealed that there is no evidence that Jamal or the boy were wounded in the manner claimed in the report, and that the footage does not depict Jamal as having been badly injured. In contrast, there are numerous indications that the two were not struck by bullets at all,” the statement said.

“The review showed that it is highly-doubtful that bullet holes in the vicinity of the two could have had their source in fire from the Israeli position, as implied in the France 2 report,” it added. “The report was edited and narrated in such a way as to create the misleading impression that it substantiated the claims made therein.”

Israel initially admitted it had killed Mohammed, an admission that on further examination was withdrawn.

It has previously accused the Palestinian cameraman who filmed the alleged death of faking it, and France 2 correspondent of being either party to the faking or of being duped.

Media organizations in France and elsewhere have also cast doubt on the Palestinian’s narrative.

It is relevant today because Israel believes it is suffering from a campaign of "delegitimization" that ultimately is a strategic threat to its existence.

Netanyahu said in the statement that the incident had “slandered Israel's reputation.” 

“This is a manifestation of the ongoing, mendacious campaign to delegitimize Israel,” he said. “There is only one way to counter lies, and that is through the truth. Only the truth can prevail over lies."

Israel’s Minister of International Affairs, Strategy and Intelligence Yuval Steinitz described the claims that Israeli troops had shot the child as “a modern-day blood libel against the State of Israel.”

The term “blood libel” is used to refer to historic allegations that certain Jewish sects murdered Christian children in order to use their blood in rituals.

In an appendix to the Israeli report, an orthopedic surgeon said injuries to Jamal al-Dura’s arm that the father claimed to be from the shootout were actually incurred years earlier when he was attacked by members of the Palestinian Hamas party.

But this reporter, who met al-Dura days after the shooting in an apartment in Amman, Jordan, was shown his bandaged arm and told that he was undergoing medical treatment in a hospital paid for by Jordan's King Hussein.

At the time, al-Dura explained that he ventured onto that street corner on the way to look at a used car, and he took his son for the fun of it. There was a shootout and in a lull in the firing they dashed across the street, only to get caught in the middle when it started again.

A day after his alleged death, this reporter also visited Mohammed’s Gaza classroom and found his desk a shrine, covered by flowers and notes and his classmates mourning him.

One reason Israel is so insistent that its case be accepted may be that a previous, iconic picture of Palestinian suffering turned out to be false.

In 1982 a photograph issued by the UPI agency showed a nurse holding a baby girl and carried a caption saying an Israeli bomb had blown off the child’s arms in South Lebanon.

The picture was reportedly placed on President Ronald Reagan’s desk as a symbol of the Palestinians plight. But Israel investigated and found that the supposedly armless baby girl was in fact a four-year-old boy with a broken arm. UPI apologized.

NBC News' Ian Johnston contributed to this report.

Related:

• Full Israel coverage from NBC News.com

• Palestinian kids swept up in wave of Israeli arrests

• Iranian-born Israeli hopes ancient music will bring 'hearts of both nations together'

Dudu Greenspan/AP

An Israeli woman is taken out of a bank in the town of Beersheba, southern Israel, on Monday after an attempted robbery in which at least five people were killed.

Editor's note: This story includes a correction.

TEL AVIV, Israel -- Five people died on Monday after a robber tried to hold up a bank in southern Israel and then took a woman hostage for over an hour, officials said. The robber shot himself dead as police closed in, police said.

The robber carried out the botched heist in a residential street in Beersheba at about lunchtime local time, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said on Monday. It was a branch of Bank Hapoalim, Reuters reported.

"The moment he entered the bank he started killing," Rosenfeld added on Tuesday.  

The suspect remained at the scene and took a woman hostage, officials said. The woman was freed after he shot himself dead.

Police initially said there were two robbers but later revised that to one.  The error was discovered after a man initially thought to have been one of the robbers was taken to hospital and treated for gunshot wounds, Rosenfeld said.

“Four people have been killed and the robber apparently shot himself dead. The scene is now clear," Reuters quoted regional police commander Yoram Levy as telling Israel Radio.

Israeli media reports said the four victims were three bank employees and a customer, Reuters reported.

Four civilians were injured, Rosenfeld said. 

Violent bank heists are rare in Israel. In 2011, a robber killed a security guard in a bank in the center of the country.

Reuters and NBC News' Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.

Lawahez Jabari / NBC News

Ahmed Jawabreh, 14, was arrested in the middle of the night for allegedly throwing stones at Israeli soldiers in the West Bank refugee camp where he lives and wasn't released for another 18 days. His was only one of a recent wave of arrests of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities, human rights groups say.

TEL AVIV – Ahmed Jawabreh, 14, was asleep in his home in early April at the al-Arub refugee camp near Hebron, in the occupied West Bank, when Israeli soldiers came looking for him. He had been anticipating exams at school in the morning, not a knock at the door at 3:30 a.m.

Ahmed was arrested that night for allegedly throwing stones at Israeli soldiers in the camp earlier in the day and wasn’t released for another 18 days, when a judge ordered that a fine of $1,100 be paid and that Ahmed be placed under house arrest.

His was only one of a recent wave of arrests of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities, human rights groups say. According to Defence for Children International (DCI), an independent non-governmental organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, since the beginning of this year there has been a 17 percent increase in arrests of Palestinian children. An average of 198 children were arrested each month in 2012; that average has risen to 232 arrests during the first three months of 2013, DCI reported.  

Human rights groups say that in Hebron in particular – where Ahmed was detained – there are clear violations of international law on a daily basis, with children as young as 8 being held for violations ranging from throwing stones to being in restricted areas illegally. On March 20 alone, Israeli soldiers arrested 27 children in Hebron.

Reports of this spike in arrests come on the heels of a UNICEF study released in February which estimated around 700 Palestinian children between the ages of 12 and 17 are detained each year. Over the past decade, the report said, around “7,000 children have been detained, interrogated, prosecuted and/or imprisoned within the Israeli military justice system – an average of two children each day.”

'Prevalence of minors'
The Israeli Defense Force (IDF) said in a statement that there has been an increased threat to Israeli civilians and security forces recently in the form of “popular violence and rioting in Judea and Samaria [also known as the West Bank],” and that there was “a prevalence of minors taking part in such riots.”

The statement added: “It should be noted that these arrests do take place at night in order to prevent large-scale riots that would ultimately escalate the situation.”

Under Israeli military criminal law it is possible to arrest and put on trial anyone 12 years or older. Statutes in that law also state that anyone throwing stones on "a fixed target" can face a term of up to ten years, and that throwing a stone "on a moving target" can be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison.

Beyond the immediate concern about abuses carried out against minors like Ahmed, the consequences of imprisoning and convicting young people in this way are widespread and long-term, said Khaled Quzmar, a lawyer with DCI.

"(A) big number of those children end up leaving school or are recruited by the Israeli forces to collaborate with them following threats during investigations,” he said. “They threaten them with imprisonment if they did not collaborate."

In Ahmed's case, the soldiers were accompanied by an Israeli TV crew filming the arrest for a documentary. During the filming, Ahmed is seen begging to be allowed to take his exams in the morning. The soldiers are polite but still handcuff and blindfold him.

Ahmed, who says he admitted to throwing stones only after being mistreated, said the soldiers beat him after the cameras were turned off.

His mother thought the arrest could have been handled differently.

“They could've asked me,” she said. “I would've taken him to the police station. But not at 3:30 in the morning – to take a child from his bed!"

In 2009, the IDF established a juvenile court with special provisions for trying minors in criminal cases. The minor is given a court-appointed defense attorney and a parent or relative is required at the hearing. Minors have the right to be informed of their rights prior to an investigation, the IDF says.

However, UNICEF reported minors are often held without a parent or legal guardian present, they are often not provided with legal counsel and in some cases they are handcuffed, blindfolded and confined inside checkpoint containers.

Ahmed’s version echoes UNICEF’s findings.

"I was left outside in the sun in the daytime and in the cold at night. I was beaten many times. I was screaming," he said. "In the end I admitted to throwing two stones." 

NBC News' Marian Smith contributed to this report.

Related:

• Resistance through reality TV? Young Palestinians battle to become 'President'
• UN suspends aid in Gaza after protesters storm headquarters
• Obama visits a Bethlehem in midst of change, Islamization

TEL AVIV — Israel’s Negev Desert is alive – with locusts.

Huge swarms of the newly hatched critters have begun marching across the sand, devouring everything in their path.

With the help of high-tech irrigation methods, much of Israel’s desert has been transformed into lush farmland that supplies supermarkets across the country with fresh produce. But the swarm of locusts, which locals say is the worst infestation in decades, is threatening crops and farms.

Israel’s Agriculture Ministry has deployed pickup trucks, planes and helicopters to spray pesticides on the locusts before they can inflict more damage.

“They are easy targets now, but in two or three days when their wings develop, it will be a disaster,” said Lior Katari, one of the Agriculture Ministry’s coordinators.

Adult locusts arrived in the area in March. Scientists say they likely originated in Sudan and crossed from Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula into Israel. Then they mated and laid billions of eggs in the sand which are now hatching.

Teams of exterminators are working from sunrise to sunset, spraying the millions of young locusts as they move across the ground.

NBC News spent a few hours with a team of sprayers equipped with a large tank of insecticide in a 4 x 4 pickup truck on Sunday. They received constant updates from observers in helicopters and colleagues on the ground telling them where to go.

“Quickly, we need to go to Revavim! It’s full of them,” said Yigal Maria, a specialist exterminator drafted from northern Israel to help out, referring to a small community near the border with Egypt.

His assistant, Yuval Bashari, leaned out of the window with a spray gun, dousing the locusts with pesticides.

“Look over there, you see all that green? It’s locusts! Can you believe it?” Bashari shouted.  

The ground was covered with what looked like a slow-moving green carpet. Millions of locusts, all moving in the same direction, made a loud rustling sound as they devoured everything in their path.

The spray team started to circle the swarm, moving slowly from the outer edge inwards. The locusts panicked, trying to leap out of the way of the vehicle and the milky white spray. Many perished under the wheels of the vehicle. It took about 30 minutes to finish them off.

“Let’s go, we are finished here,” Maria shouted.  “We need to eat something before they call us again.”

Dave Copeland / NBC News

Golan Cohen, owner of an organic herb farm, supervises volunteer workers covering his vines on Sunday.

The insecticides worked – but that doesn’t help organic farmers who can’t use pesticides.

“They were eating the weeds at first, they were small, so we ignored them,” said Golan Cohen, the owner of an organic farm that grows desert herbs used in the United States for medical research.

But when things got bad, they resorted to non-invasive, but also less effective, means to ward off the menace.

“At first we just made noise, banging pots and shouting – and it worked,” said Dror Cohen-Chen, a worker on Cohen’s farm near the Egyptian border. But that technique didn’t last long.

“The next day we came back and they had destroyed everything,” said Cohen.

As he spoke, a busload of volunteers turned up to help.   

“It’s really warming the heart to see [the volunteers]. It’s strengthening us, because we had a very hard week of struggling with the locusts.”

Eli Hanev, a sunburned and dust-covered local, had been up since dawn spraying pesticides in another area. He sauntered up to the organic farm, a 9mm pistol on his hip.

“Three thousand years ago God sent the Egyptians a plague of locusts, now we are getting them back….” he said, the rest of his sentence drowned out by a helicopter swooping low overhead.

Related: 

• PhotoBlog: Farmers fight back against swarming locusts
• UN urges: Eat more insects! (Seriously) 
• Full Israel coverage from NBC News

This story was originally published on Mon May 13, 2013 3:25 PM EDT

Kirsty Wigglesworth / AFP - Getty Images, file

A public flap has erupted after the Israeli government spent more than $127,000 to build a bedroom for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) and his wife Sarah on a flight to attend the funeral of British former prime minister Margaret Thatcher in April.

JERUSALEM - Benjamin Netanyahu is changing his mid-air sleeping arrangements after a public flap over a $127,000 custom-built bedroom for the Israeli prime minister and his wife on a flight to London last month.

Israel's Channel 10 television reported the sum was tagged onto the $300,000 cost of chartering an El Al Boeing 767 that flew the couple and Netanyahu's entourage of aides and bodyguards to former British leader Margaret Thatcher's funeral.

News of the extra public expenditure, for a 5-1/2-hour flight, caused an outcry on Israel's social media and in its mainstream newspapers that coincided with protests over government plans to raise taxes as part of an austerity budget.

"Bibi is king, and in a monarchy, when the king and queen fly, price is no object," said political commentator Sima Kadmon, referring to the prime minister by his nickname.

"Where is the shame?" she wrote on the front page of Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel's biggest newspaper.

Netanyahu's office did not dispute the reported figures. It said he had been unaware of the extra cost of installing the double bed and partition and wanted to arrive fresh for meetings with world leaders on the sidelines of the funeral.

The prime minister, it said, was entitled to a good night's sleep on an overnight flight after a busy day. But it added, a sleeping cabin would no longer be installed on his flights to Europe.

The Netanyahu bedroom touched a particular nerve in Israel after news earlier this year that the prime minister's office had an annual budget of $2,700 to buy his favourite flavours from a Jerusalem ice cream parlour.

A post on Netanyahu's Facebook page contained a link to a website inviting people to sign a petition demanding he pay for the bed out of his own pocket. Nearly 4,000 have signed since Channel 10 first broke the news on Friday. 

TEL AVIV -- Amid a heated war of words between Israel and Iran over the Islamic republic's nuclear ambitions, one musician is hoping that an unconventional weapon will help cool the tensions.

Iranian-born Israeli Menashe Sasson, 67, broadcasts traditional Persian melodies for an audience in his old home country from a studio in Israel. He hears a note of optimism in the melancholic music and believes it can help Iranians and Israelis overcome the rhetoric of hate.

Every Friday morning, Sasson makes his way to Radio RadisIn in Rishon Lezion, a city south of Tel Aviv, and removes an ancient instrument called a santur from a large case. Sasson, dressed formally in a jacket and tie, taps gently on the strings with a pair of slender hammers and produces a delicate sound that is instantly evocative of the Middle East.

Sasson and his beloved santur moved to Israel 50 years ago but he was born in Isfahan, an Iranian town that is both a center of the Jewish population in Iran and home to one of the country's nuclear research facilities.

"I hope that my music can one day bring the hearts of both nations together," he said.

Amir Shai, who founded Radio RadisIn four-and-a-half years ago, feels a similar sense of mission.

"I had one main goal: to introduce the Israeli culture to the Iranians," Shai said. "For years the Iranian leadership poisoned the Iranian people with lies about Israel. It's time to change this."

Paul Goldman / NBC News

Manashe Sasson says he hopes his ancient santur music will "bring the hearts of both nations together."

Shai sees his radio station as a bridge between two nations in desperate need of better communication, and Sasson and his santur play a big part.

While not a household name in Iran, Sasson says he receives hundreds of emails from fans there. "There are a lot of peace-loving Iranians who contact me knowing I'm an Israeli. They're encouraging me and this warms my heart," he said.

There is some dispute over the size of the Jewish community in Iran. It has shrunk considerably since the Islamic Revolution but remains the biggest Jewish community outside of Israel in the Middle East.

Sasson hopes the situation for Jews in Iran will change.

"Iran is a beautiful country that has become the biggest prison in the world. It's like time has stopped there," he said. "The Iranian people deserve freedom.''

Related:

• Full Israel coverage from NBC News.com
• Full Iran coverage from NBC News

News Analysis

TEL AVIV, Israel –  Syrian rebels have cheered Israel’s strikes against Syrian government facilities, while the Syrian government has said the attacks prove Israel is backing the rebels.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. Israel is not engaging in the Syrian civil war. Instead, it is striking early blows in Israel’s possible next war: against Iran’s Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

“This attack had nothing to do with the Syrian civil war. The big story is Iran and Hezbollah, not Syria,” Professor Eyal Zisser, a Syrian expert at Tel Aviv University, told NBC News Monday.

“Israel’s message is that we want to change the rules of the game. For the last 20 years Iran provided all kinds of weapons to Hezbollah through Syria. Now this is the end of the story. Israel will no longer accept the rearming of Hezbollah,” Zisser added.

Analysts here say there are four weapons systems on Israel’s blacklist, whose transfer through Syria would trigger air attacks: guided ground to ground rockets like the Iranian Fateh 110’s reportedly destroyed in this weekend’s attack; chemical weapons; land to sea missiles like Russian Yakhont missiles that can hit a ship 200 miles at sea at speeds of up to Mach 2; and anti-aircraft rockets like the SAM 17s that would endanger Israel’s control of the skies.

Israeli analysts have taken to calling these weapons “game-changers,” whose transfer must be stopped at any price. But others point out that fearsome as they are, Israel has answers to all of them and is in no real danger of losing its superiority against a relatively small outfit like Hezbollah.

Where is Syria’s ‘red line’?
So the public debate in Israel, which the military has kept out of, revolves around this question: Where is Syria’s so –called “red line”? At what point will Israel’s attacks against targets inside Syria provoke the Syrian leadership into retaliating against Israel? Is Israel walking a tightrope that will lead inevitably to a sudden clash with Syria?

Israel takes comfort in its intelligence assessment that President Bashar al-Assad would rather absorb the blows and the humiliation than confront Israel. The assumption is that Assad knows any confrontation would lead to a brutal Israeli attack, probably against his air force and air fields, and that would lead to his defeat at the hands of the Syrian rebels.

But Israel is also in a quandary about its best interests: What is better for Israel: Syria under the Iranian-backed leadership of Assad? Syria under a rebel-Sunni-Islamist coalition? Or, most likely, the breakup of Syria into ethnic and religious cantons?

With no clear answer, Israel is electing to stay well out of it.

Its actions against Hezbollah on Syrian soil could backfire if Syria chooses to retaliate. So far, there is no real sign of that – although reports from Syria this weekend suggest that Syrian missiles are now trained on Israel.

But while maintaining a heightened state of alert, and positioning two Iron Dome anti-missile systems in the northern towns of Haifa and Safed, Israel is also downplaying any threat, its citizens are paying little attention, and an order to civilian aircraft to stay out of the northern skies is expected to be lifted today.

Related links

US official: Syrian rebels lack 'ability or intent' to use chemical weapons

Israel to Syria's Assad: Airstrikes not aimed at helping rebels

Analysis: Israel may be ready for more active military role in Syria

A senior State Department official said Monday there is no indication that rebels fighting the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad have “the ability or the intent” to use chemical weapons.

A member of the U.N. human rights commission, speaking to Swiss and Italian television a day earlier, had spoken of “concrete suspicions” that the rebels had used chemical weapons.

But the commissioner, Carla del Ponte, said that there was “not yet incontrovertible proof.” And the commission itself released a statement Monday to say that it had not reached a conclusion about the use of chemical weapons by either side in the two-year conflict, which has left an estimated 70,000 people dead.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel has said the United States believes “with some degree of varying confidence” that Syria has used chemical weapons against its people, but President Barack Obama has said it is not clear who used the weapons and how.

An activist group opposed to the Syrian regime said Monday that an Israeli airstrike on Syrian military targets over the weekend killed at least 42 Syrian soldiers. The dead reportedly included elite troops stationed near the presidential palace.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group based in Britain, said its figure was based on sources at Syrian hospitals, The Associated Press reported. The New York Times quoted a high-ranking Syrian military official as saying dozens of elite troops had been killed.

Israeli jets bombed a military research facility north of Damascus, the capital, before dawn Sunday, a U.S. official told NBC News. Video shot by activists showed a fireball rising into the sky.

It was the second apparent Israeli strike in Syria in recent days. The first came Friday, U.S. officials said, when Israeli warplanes targeted a shipment of weapons headed for Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia that supports the Syrian government.

On Monday, Israel sought to persuade Assad that the strikes were not meant to weaken him.

“There are no winds of war,” said Yair Golan, the general commanding Israeli forces on the Syrian and Lebanese fronts, Reuters reported, quoting an Israeli news website. “Do you see tension? There is no tension. Do I look tense to you?”

Syria has accused Israel of trying to support the anti-Assad rebels, but analysts have said Israel is more likely trying to keep the Syrian government from sending weapons to Hezbollah, an avowed enemy of Israel.

Anti-regime activists also said Monday that Syrian rebels shot down a government helicopter in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, killing eight troops on board, the AP reported.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground for its reporting, posted a video showing several armed men standing in front of wreckage that one of the fighters says is a helicopter shot down late Sunday along Syria's border with Iraq.

As the man speaks, the camera shifts to a pickup truck piled with bodies. The fighter is then heard saying that all of Assad's troops who were aboard the helicopter were killed in the downing. He says Islamic fighters of the Abu Bakr Saddiq brigade brought down the helicopter as it was taking off from a nearby air base.

This story was originally published on Mon May 6, 2013 11:57 AM EDT

JERUSALEM - Israel sought to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday that its recent airstrikes around Damascus did not aim to weaken him in the face of a more than two-year-old rebellion.

Officials say Israel is reluctant to take sides in Syria's civil war for fear its actions would boost Islamists who are even more hostile to Israel than the Assad family, which has maintained a stable standoff with the Jewish state for decades.

But Israel has repeatedly warned it will not let Assad's ally Hezbollah receive hi-tech weaponry. Intelligence sources said Israel attacked Iranian-supplied missiles stored near the Syrian capital on Friday and Sunday that were awaiting transfer to Hezbollah guerrilla group in neighboring Lebanon.

Syria accused Israel of belligerence meant to shore up the outgunned anti-Assad rebels - drawing a denial on Monday from veteran Israeli lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Slideshow: Syria uprising

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A look back at the conflict that has overtaken the country.

Launch slideshow

Interviewed on Israel Radio, Hanegbi said the Netanyahu government aimed to avoid "an increase in tension with Syria by making clear that if there is activity, it is only against Hezbollah, not against the Syrian regime."

Hanegbi noted Israel had not formally acknowledged carrying out the raids in an effort to allow Assad to save face, adding that Netanyahu began a scheduled visit to China on Sunday to signal the sense of business as usual.

The Assad government has condemned the airstrikes as tantamount to a "declaration of war" and threatened unspecified retaliation.

But Hanegbi said Israel was ready for any development if the Syrians misinterpreted its messages and was ready "to respond harshly if indeed there is aggression against us".

As a precaution, Israel deployed two of its five Iron Dome rocket interceptors near the Syrian and Lebanese fronts and grounded civilian aircraft in the area, although an Israeli military spokesman said the airspace would reopen on Monday.

Military analysts say Syria would be no match for Israel in any confrontation. But Damascus, with its leverage over Hezbollah, could still consider proxy attacks through Lebanon, where Israel's conventional forces fought an inconclusive war against the Iranian-backed guerrillas in 2006.

Related:

• Israel strikes Syrian military research center, US official says
• Analysis: Israel may be ready for more active military role in Syria
• Full Syria coverage from NBC News

This story was originally published on Mon May 6, 2013 4:22 AM EDT

Israeli jets bombed a military research facility north of Damascus early Sunday, a senior official told NBC News. It marked the second Israeli attack on targets in Syria in recent days. 

Heavy explosions shook the city, and video shot by activists showed a fireball rising into the sky after Sunday's strikes.

Reuters reported that a Western intelligence source said the operation hit Iranian-supplied missiles that were en route to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon.

A rebel spokesman, who spoke from a “liberated area” held by the opposition in Damascus, told NBC News there were huge explosions just before 2 a.m. Sunday local time (7 p.m. Saturday ET) in the Qaysoun mountains on the edge of Damascus. 

“Around 10 locations were hit," the spokesman said. "It was difficult to tell what was hit in the raid and what exploded afterwards.  Some of the targets were weapons and weapons depots.

"Secondary explosions continued for about four hours.  They shook all of Damascus. There was still smoke in the air as the sun came up.”

From its Damascus media office, the Free Syrian Army listed nine apparent targets, including the Syrian Revolutionary Guard, the 104th brigade headquarters, a weapons depot in Qasyoun and a military research center at Jamraya.

The FSA said power was cut in parts of Damascus at 1:48 am local time Sunday (6:48 p.m. Saturday ET). A FSA spokesman said the fires and explosions "made Damascus look like the day at night."

The White House said there would be no official comment on the latest attack, but diplomatic sources and U.S. officials told NBC News that the administration is fully supportive of the airstrikes.

Slideshow: Syria uprising

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A look back at the conflict that has overtaken the country.

Launch slideshow

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he spoke with the head of the Arab League, Nabil ElAraby, about the Israeli air strikes on Sunday and expressed "grave concern" for the risks to regional security. 

On Friday, Israeli warplanes launched strikes against targets inside Syria, U.S. officials told NBC News. It’s believed the primary target also was a shipment of weapons headed for Hezbollah, they said. A senior U.S. official said the airstrikes were believed to be related to delivery systems for chemical weapons.

After that attack, an Israeli spokesman in Washington said that Israel would not comment specifically on the reports but said that “Israel is determined to prevent the transfer of chemical weapons or other game-changing weaponry by the Syrian regime to terrorists, especially to Hezbollah in Lebanon.”

It wasn’t clear whether the Israelis alerted the U.S. before the attack. White House officials referred all questions to the Israelis.

Rebel units were in disagreement about what type of weapons were in the convoy, Reuters reported. A rebel from an information-gathering unit in Damascus that calls itself "The Syrian Islamic Masts Intelligence" said the convoy carried anti-aircraft missiles.

The rebel, who asked not to be named, added: "There were three strikes by Israeli F-16 jets that damaged a convoy carrying anti-aircraft missiles heading to the Shi'ite Lebanese party (Hezbollah) along the Damascus-Beirut military road. One strike hit a site near the (Syrian) Fourth Armoured Division in al-Saboura but we have been unable to determine what is in that location."

However, Qassim Saadedine, a commander and spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army, told Reuters he did not think the weapons were anti-aircraft. "We have nothing confirmed yet but we are assuming that it is some type of long-range missile that would be capable of carrying chemical materials," he said. 

In the January attack, Israeli fighter jets struck a convoy of sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles believed on their way to Hezbollah.  

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon publicly acknowledged the January airstrike inside Syria in a joint press conference with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in Tel Aviv on April 22. Ya’alon said any Syrian delivery of sophisticated weapons to rogue elements like Hezbollah would be a “red line” for Israel and “when they crossed this red line, we operated. We acted.”

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Syria is in the middle of a civil war pitting rebels against the regime of President Bashir Assad. Tens of thousands have already died, and the possible use of the nation’s stockpile of chemical weapons has been of grave concern to the U.S. and other nations.

Last week, the White House said there was evidence that Syria’s government may have used chemical weapons against its own people. But President Barack Obama has cautioned against rushing to action against Assad’s government, saying that the U.S. required more evidence before getting involved in the civil war there.  

The U.S. has long believed that Syria was stockpiling chemical weapons. Intelligence reports indicate that it has sarin and the nerve agent tabun along with traditional chemicals like mustard gas and hydrogen cyanide. A 2011 CIA report said Syria was also developing the potent nerve agent VX, which could render a city uninhabitable for days.

Syria has said that it hasn’t used and will not use chemical weapons.

On Tuesday, Hezbollah’s leader warned the rebels that his militia was ready to intervene on Assad’s side in Syria’s civil war. There have been concerns that Syrian SCUD missiles that might be capable of carrying chemical weapons could be transferred to Hezbollah.

NBC News' Richard Engel, Kristen Welker and Stacey Klein and Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

• Israel to Syria's Assad: Airstrikes not aimed at helping rebels
• Syrian government used chemical weapons 4 times, rebels say

This story was originally published on Sun May 5, 2013 10:33 AM EDT

NEWS ANALYSIS

ANTAKYA, Turkey -- War makes strange bedfellows. President Bashar Assad’s regime is in the unique position of being targeted both by Israel and supporters of al Qaeda.

It is hard to imagine more a diverse couple: Sworn enemies fighting against the same government.

Israel carried out a series of attacks on military targets in Damascus early Sunday, close to President Assad’s main compound, US officials told NBC News. A rebel spokesman said about 10 locations had been hit, adding: “They shook all of Damascus. There was still smoke in the air as the sun came up.”

Witnesses said they heard low-flying jets in the air, but only after the explosions began.  Witnesses also claim to have heard jets in Lebanon shortly before the raid.  Israel has not confirmed it carried out any attack.

Syrian state TV blamed Israel, and said it was helping the rebels it calls terrorists.

An Israeli source said Sunday’s targets included Iranian-made missiles bound for Hezbollah.

The rebel spokesman in Damascus said the rebels’ “spirits were lifted” by the pre-dawn raid, and that they resumed “intense attacks” on the regime in the capital on Sunday morning.

While there is no evidence that Israel is coordinating with the Syrian opposition, both are worried about what could happen as the civil war spins further out of control.

Israel specifically does not want Syria to hand over weapons, chemical or conventional, to Hezbollah.

Both Hezbollah – which is based in Lebanon, just north of Israel - and Iran are allies of Bashar Assad.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a bloody war in 2006.  But Israel doesn’t fully back the rebels either, especially not a powerful contingent of Islamic radicals. 

Israel does not want the Nusra front, which has pledged allegiance to al Qaeda, to obtain chemical weapons.  Neither does Washington.  Israel’s strategy thus far appears to be targeting threats as they come up and picking them off. 

If Israel sees weapons moving toward its border, it acts.  But many across the region are now wondering if this raid, larger in scale, is the start of a more active Israeli military role.  Has Israel decided that the longer the conflict drags on, the more risks there are regional stability?  Was this another surgical strike or the start of a new policy?  The answer may become clear in the coming days.

Related video: Syrian government used chemical weapons 4 times, rebels say