Israel threatened Syria on Wednesday over what officials said was complicity in Palestinian suicide bombings that killed 16 people in the first such attacks in the Jewish state in nearly six months.
Security officials said the Israeli military would answer Tuesday's twin bus bombings with a renewed assassination campaign against leaders of Hamas, the militant group behind the attacks, both in the Palestinian territories and abroad.
"Whoever is responsible for using terror against us won't sleep quietly," Israeli army chief Moshe Yaalon told a parliamentary committee.
Israel's threats heightened regional tensions by raising the spectre of another air raid like the one carried out deep inside Syria last October against a suspected Palestinian militant training camp.
A renewed drive against Hamas's hierarchy could also deepen the latest spiral of violence, further complicating Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plans to withdraw from the Gaza Strip by the end of next year.
Tuesday's bombings aboard commuter buses in the desert city of Beersheba dashed Israeli hopes that Hamas had lost the ability to strike inside the Jewish state.
"Syria ... continues to support and aid and provide assistance to terrorist organisations," Raanan Gissin, a senior Sharon adviser, told Reuters. "The last example is Hamas and this terrorist attack."
Yaalon said Israel must "deal with ... those who support terrorism whether it be elements of the Palestinian Authority, elements from Hizbollah in Lebanon or terror command posts in Damascus with Syrian approval".
Syrian officials were not immediately available for comment.
Israel accuses Syria of harbouring militant groups and using Lebanese Hizbollah guerrillas as surrogates against the Jewish state - accusations consistently denied by Damascus.
The bus bombings inflicted the worst Israeli death toll since an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber killed 23 people last October at a restaurant in the Israeli port city of Haifa.
That attack triggered last year's Israeli air strike near Damascus, the deepest inside Syria in 30 years.
A senior government source said while Israel had no desire to stir up its northern border, it wanted to remind Syria its tolerance was wearing thin.
In a statement released in Beirut, Hamas denied any involvement by its leadership abroad in the Beersheba bombings.
Israel killed Hamas's two top leaders, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, in Gaza missile strikes earlier this year, but security sources said further high-level hits had been put on hold in recent months.
Top Hamas officials in Gaza, Mahmoud al-Zahar and Ismail Haniyeh, have since gone underground. Hamas political chief Khaled Meshaal, who survived an Israeli assassination attempt in Jordan in 1997, is based in Damascus.
The Beersheba bombings were the Islamic group's revenge for the assassinations of Yassin in March and Rantissi in April, which followed a suicide attack that killed 10 people in Ashdod.
Tuesday's attacks showed Hamas was not a spent force despite Israel's repeated strikes on its infrastructure.
"These new threats of assassinations will frighten neither Hamas nor our people," said Hamas spokesman Mushir al-Masri.
Sharon's far-right critics said the bus bombings showed the folly of his plan to evacuate all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip, a move they have called a "reward for terror".
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