JERUSALEM _ In its first known military engagement with Iranian forces, Israel responded to a drone incursion into its territory early Saturday by bombing the launch site in Syria, according to Israeli military officials.
Returning from that mission, an Israeli F-16 fighter jet was shot down over Israeli territory by Syrian anti-aircraft missiles.
That prompted Israel to respond with what the army called "a large-scale operation" targeting 12 Syrian and Iranian military sites.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long warned of the danger of Iran's growing military presence only yards away from Israel's northern border.
The chain of events Saturday threatens to escalate into active combat between Syrian government forces and Israel, which has remained an outsider in the 7-year-old Syrian civil war.
The first hint that anything was amiss came at 4:15 a.m. Israeli time, as air raid sirens sounded over the communities in the Beit Shean valley in the lower Galilee.
An automatic warning system was triggered by the Iranian drone _ launched from Syria _ that penetrated Israeli airspace in what appeared to be an attempt to collect intelligence.
The Israeli army released a video showing the incursion of the drone, which was shot down by Apache helicopters. The drone was "an advanced, low-signature model Israel has never before captured," said Brig. Gen. Tomer Bar, second-in-command of Israel's air force.
In retaliation for the incursion, Israel bombed the Iranian drone control site in Syria.
Struck by advanced Syrian air defense batteries on their return, the pilots of one Israeli jet ejected before their F-16 crashed. They were injured but survived.
The jet fell to earth next to a high school in the Galilean community of Hardouf. The school was empty early on the weekend morning.
Then Israel attacked, and for a second time, rocket sirens sounded in Israel's north as Syrian state television reported "a new "Israeli aggression" in the form of explosions close to the capital city of Damascus.
"Syria and Iran are playing with fire," said Israel Defense Forces spokesman Lt. Jonathan Conricus.
The Iranian foreign ministry said the Israeli claim that it intercepted a drone was "ridiculous."
"Reports of downing an Iranian drone flying over Israel and also Iran's involvement in attacking an Israeli jet are so ridiculous ... . Iran only provides military advice to Syria," Iran foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying on Iranian television.
Russia, Syrian President Bashar Assad's most stalwart ally, which has established several military bases in Syria during the course of the civil war, said in a statement issued by the foreign ministry that it urged "all sides to exercise restraint and to avoid any actions that could lead to an even greater complication of the situation."
"It is necessary to unconditionally respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Syria and other countries in the region."
The downing of an Israeli jet by Syria was a sobering juncture in Netanyahu's efforts to avoid military entanglements with Russia through a "deconfliction mechanism."
At a Jan. 30 meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Netanyahu said: "The most important thing I think is to make sure that we understand each other and that we don't shoot down each other's planes. And we decided to do what is called in this awful jargon deconfliction, which means not shooting each other. And we established a mechanism to do that, and that mechanism holds secure."
Hezbollah, the Lebanese-based militia and a close Iranian ally, said in a statement that the downing of the Israeli jet represents "the start of a new strategic era."
It is the first time that Israel and Syria have engaged in direct combat since 1982, at the height of the Lebanon war.
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(Special correspondents Tarnopolsky and Bulos reported from Jerusalem and Amman, Jordan, respectively.)
