JERUSALEM — The Israeli military said on Tuesday that Syrian forces had fired two surface-to-air missiles after Israeli aircraft targeted artillery positions in the Syrian Golan Heights overnight, but it categorically denied a claim by the Syrians that they had shot down an Israeli warplane and a drone.

It was not immediately clear whether the Syrian antiaircraft fire early Tuesday, a rare response to an Israeli air incursion, was intended to hit the Israeli planes or to serve as a warning. Syria’s state news agency, SANA, cited the country’s General Command of the Army and Armed Forces as saying that defense forces responded to an attack by “the Israeli enemy’s air force” on a military position in the southern province of Quneitra around 1 a.m.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military, said the Syrians “didn’t shoot anything down.” Suggesting that the missile fire had not come close to hitting the Israeli aircraft, he added that they were “in no danger” and that “at no point was the safety of the aircraft compromised.”

Israeli Army Radio said that the missile fire had been inaccurate and had occurred long after the Israeli attack.