Hard Information Difficult To Come By

Well, this'll do nothing to ease tensions in the Mideast. Syria reports it opened fire on Israeli airplanes that allegedly violated its airspace in the early morning hours of Thursday.

"Enemy Israeli planes penetrated Syrian airspace from the Mediterranean Sea heading towards the northeast, breaking the sound barrier," a Syrian army spokesman told the official state news agency, according to Agence-France Presse.

A Syrian cabinet minister said officials were considering how to respond to Israeli "aggression," adding "[o]ur air defenses repulsed them and forced them to leave... after the Israeli planes dropped munitions, without causing human or material loss."

Israeli officials had no comment on the incident, AFP reports.

If confirmed, the incident would appear to be the first exchange of live ammunition, in what to this point had been an increasingly heated war of words between the two countries. Each side blames the other for failure to restart stalled peace talks for the past seven years, and for ratcheting up tensions.

Syrian Information Minister Mohsen Bilal told Al-Jazeera that Syria's leadership was "giving serious consideration to its response... to this aggression" -- although another minister admitted it wasn't clear whether the Israeli planes actually dropped any bombs.

"They intervened in our airspace... which they should not do -- we are a sovereign country and they should not come into airspace," Expatriate Affairs Minister Bussaina Shaaban said, before adding "we do not know yet" if the aircraft dropped anything.

"The investigation is still going on on the ground," she said.

US State Department officials also declined formal comment, although one anonymous official told AFP "I don't think anybody here is viewing this with any particular or unique concern."

Israeli warplanes last flew over Syria in June 2006, when aircraft flew over President Bashar al-Assad's palace in northern Syria while he was inside. The government in Damascus condemned as an "act of piracy."

FMI: www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sy.html