Reuters is reporting that Israel has fired upon and destroyed a machine gun position in the Golan Heights. It is unclear at this moment whether this is merely spillover from the Syrian civil war or whether this is a new front opening for Israel in the middle east.

Israeli Spokesman Ofir Gendelman stated on his Twitter page, Israeli forces “destroyed a Syrian machine gun nest that fired twice in the last 24 hours on Israeli patrols operating to safeguard the border.”

This is not the first spillover as shells have fallen several times inside Israeli-controlled territory during Syria’s civil war. Many of these incidents have drawn retaliatory Israeli return fire. Syria’s southern provinces bordering Jordan and Israel have become an increasingly significant battleground as the capital of Damascus comes into play and President Bashar al-Assad’s forces fight hard to prevent rebel advances.

The Israeli military claims that one of its vehicles was hit and destroyed late Saturday evening by shots engaged from across the Israeli-Syrian ceasefire line on the Golan Heights. There were no injuries to report. Israeli military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Lerner, said, “Our understanding is that it wasn’t stray fire.”

After a second incident on Sunday, Israeli soldiers “responded with accurate fire toward the Syrian post from which they were fired on”, the military said.

Defence Minister Moshe Yaalon said in a statement that Israel viewed any sort of shooting from Syria “with severity” and would not allow “the Syrian army or any other element to violate Israeli sovereignty by firing at our territory”.

ViralRead will continue to update this post as more information is gathered. But it appears that tensions may be crossing over into hostilities in an already volatile situation.